The COOPERHATE - Multidisciplinary cooperation approach to prevent and counter hate crime and hate speech aims to provide a comprehensive approach to the prevention, reporting, investigation and prosecution of hate crime and speech-related incidents focused on (i) improving the enforcement of hate speech and hate crime-related laws; (ii) ensuring justice, protection and support for hate crime and hate speech victims; (iii) increasing the capacity of public authorities and civil society to identify, detect and act on hate speech and hate crime; and (iv) raising public awareness to hate speech and hate crime. To do so, COOPERHATE will perform an assessment of current gaps and obstacles to the successful implementation of hate crime-related laws, develop an online platform & app for hate crime reports and to enhance victim involvement, develop collaboration protocols between CSOs, LEAs, IT companies and judicial actors, create the COOPERHATE’s Detection & Assessment Technology and Motivation Identification & Victim Assistance (MIVA) Toolkit, provide a b-Learning training course for LEAs, CSOs and judicial actors, and implement a holistic awareness-raising and public positive-narrative campaign.

The project uses a mixed-method approach to examine advantaged and disadvantaged groups’ needs, motivations, cognitions and emotions to understand what hinders or fosters social change towards racial equality.

In the current political climate of increasing polarization, otherization and dehumanization, creative and targeted measures that increase pro-sociality and decrease prejudicial attitudes toward minoritized individuals are needed. The current study aims to expand the evidence on the psychoneurophisiology of prejudice toward minoritized groups (i.e., religious, ethnic-racial, and sexual minorities), and on potential buffers of intergroup prejudice, by developing and testing the efficacy of two pro-sociality cultivation programs on increasing pro-social motivations and decreasing prejudicial attitudes, and examining their neurophysiological correlates (HRV, cortisol, vasopressin, oxytocin), in a three-arm experimental design (empathy-focused intervention– EFI; compassion focused intervention– CFI; waiting-list- WL).  

To explore intergroup factors that promote or inhibit bystanders’ helping behaviors in cyberbullying incidents, in a Portuguese sample, and explore mediators.

Despite the Union’s effort to fight against online hate speech (OHS), several reports showed an increase in OHS during 2020-21. The current pandemic provided a context for increased scapegoating and stigmatization, and minority groups are disproportionally targets of hatred discourse. OHS is a persistent threat to the Union’s values and there is a need for more knowledge on its content, detection and countering, as highlighted in the current Call. Portugal, as other member states, has seen an escalation of hate speech against immigrants, racial/ethnic groups, and LGBTIQ communities. However, there is no systematized knowledge nor tools designed to detect, monitor and prevent OHS against these communities. Our project aims at addressing this need, offering a comprehensive, participatory and culturally sensitive approach to analyse, detect, and counter, direct and indirect OHS in Portuguese language. 

One of the major problems faced by contemporary climate-changed and globalized societies is increasing land use pressure, especially in rural areas, with climate change-induced natural disasters and political conflicts driving the migration of individuals and communities, together with policies for the deployment of large-scale renewable energy infrastructures for mitigating climate change. In fact, a growing body of social sciences’ research has been concerned with understanding why, despite people tending to agree with renewable energy generation in general, local resistance to the deployment of renewable energy infrastructures is often found [1;2]. This body of research has been driven by trying to understand local opposition to renewable energy infrastructures in order to overcome it [2]. However, more recent and critical approaches to this research have begun to highlight that (1) increased local resistance might be due to the fact that renewable energy transitions can entail as many social and environmental justice issues as the non-renewable status quo [3; 4; 5; 6]; and that (2) the rise of right-wing populist socio-political configurations and communication might also be pushing for climate change skepticism and an associated backlash to renewable energy transitions [7; 8; 9; 10; 11].  However, most research so far has failed to bring those two lines of research together and to explore how the communicative and socio-spatial organization of the so-called renewable energy transitions, so far mainly materialized through the top-down and non-participatory deployment of large-scale renewable energy infrastructures such as wind and solar farms, might also contribute to the adherence of communities to mass communicated right-wing populist framings, such as on anti-elitism, nationalism and nativism [11; 12], which could, in turn, foster local resistance not only to energy transitions but also to social inclusion and diversity. In fact, the results of the mos...

Despite Portugal’s peaceful environment and generous reception policies, it’s not immune to borderless invisible threat that is violent extremism, radicalization and terrorism. Destructive forces from extremist groups – within our country and abroad – currently poses a threat to the security and social cohesion of the Portuguese society. This proposal aims to prevent and counter extremism and radicalization in PT, by combining communication technology with a more coordinated and knowledge-based prevention effort. Project activities will include: 1. Innovative multi-level communication campaign designed to reach vulnerable individuals at risk of radicalisation and recruitment by extremists, by providing alternative or counter narratives and sharing moderate voices 2. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of multi-level communication campaign, reach and impact 3. Establishment of a multi-stakeholder network that will offer both strategic advice & skills enhancement of professionals working in close contact with members of the public 4. Dissemination Action Plan preventing & countering extremism and radicalisation in Portugal, sharing good practices and lessons learned These activities will result in outputs: 1 x multi-level communication campaign with: o 3 x Micro-documentary o 4 x Small awareness films mobile/web o 3 x Social media Monitoring and Tracking Report o Social media contents o Offline activities with Press PR Actions and an Ambassadors Program o 1 x Web Portal “RESILIENT and UNITED” 1 x Quantitative and qualitative evaluation Report 5 x training sessions for professionals, teachers and volunteers 1 Final publication and Action Plan dissemination compiling best practises and lessons learned Direct benef: members of PT Islamic community, incl refugees (estim 15.000), 50 prof, 50 teachers, 25 volunteers. Indirect beneficiary’s governmental and non-governmental actors; At EU level, policy-makers, from RAN, CSEP; Other MS and Orgs.

 ISOTIS (Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society), funded by the European Union within the Horizon2020 program, is an international project that involves 17 partners and 11 countries. The project is coordinated in CIS-IUL by the researcher Cecília Aguiar. It aims to contribute to effective policy and practice development at different system levels in order to effectively combat early arising and persisting educational inequalities. In the context of acculturation and integration, and in relation to local and national policies, ISOTIS will examine current resources, experiences, aspirations, needs and well-being of children and parents in those groups associated with persistent educational disadvantages such as significant immigrant, indigenous ethnic-cultural and low income native groups.       Quasi-panels and pooled longitudinal datasets will be used to examine the variation in early educational gaps and developmental trajectories across countries, systems and time. ISOTIS will develop inter-linked programs for parents, classrooms and professionals using Virtual Learning Environments for working in linguistically diverse contexts. This three-year project is expected to support the education practice and policy field in Europe in meeting the challenges of reducing social and educational inequalities.

The project examines whether in a context of a shared identity, (a) threat to the national group status increases narcissistic rather than genuine ingroup love, (b) particularly when perceived indispensability to the common European identity is low, and investigates (c)the mechanisms that underlie the negative effects of collective narcissism on intergroup hostility. Specifically, when groups perceive themselves as dispensable, a defensive, narcissistic ingroup positivity will trigger retaliatory hostility when the ingroup's identity is threatened. On the other hand, perceiving the ingroup as indispensable to a given common identity promotes a secure and non-narcissistic ingroup positivity, thus precluding collective narcissism and its negative effects. The project uses cross-sectional surveys and experiments to test these ideas in the context of the Europe's crisis, specifically focusing on countries of low (Portugal and Greece) and high economic status (UK and Germany) within the European Union (EU).      The project is one of the few attempts to explore not only the intergroup factors that trigger narcissism, and cognitive and emotional processes that underlie its effects on intergroup hostility, but also the moderating role of group indispensability. It is expected to contribute to the development of practical guidelines to promote secure and non-narcissistic forms of national identification especially in the midst of current crisis in Europe along with the increase of extreme right and anti-European parties represented in the EU Parliament.

O presente projeto pretende contribuir para o conhecimento sobre a integração, sucesso escolar e bem-estar dos alunos imigrantes (i.e., nacionais de países terceiros) nas escolas públicas do 1º e 2º Ciclos de Ensino Básico (CEB), em Portugal. Pretende-se concretizar este objetivo testando, especificamente, o papel das dinâmicas de aculturação e dos seus fatores psicossociais antecedentes na integração social e educativa destas crianças e jovens imigrantes. Uma vez que se pretende obter uma visão comparada e das várias perspetivas que informam o fenómeno em estudo, para além dos inquéritos a alunos imigrantes, serão ainda inquiridos alunos descendentes de imigrantes (perspetiva de um grupo comparável) e alunos de origem portuguesa (perspetive de um grupo de acolhimento). Estes dados serão contextualizados com recurso à análise dos documentos estruturantes da escola (e.g., Projeto Educativo) e com entrevistas à Direção, a elementos das coordenações pedagógicas do 1º e 2º Ciclos do CEB e inquéritos aos Diretores de Turma dos alunos imigrantes inquiridos.