Nordic Safe Cities’ Post

Tomorrow afternoon, the Security, Democracies & Cities conference in Brussels starts. The conference will take place from wednesday until friday and is hosted by European Forum for Urban Security (Efus). Nordic Safe Cities will attend and contribute at three sessions: - On Thursday the 21st of March from 4.30-6.00 pm (studio), our Deputy Director Lotte Fast Carlsen will speak at the thematic session - Protecting freedom of expression and diversity in shared public spaces. The session will discuss the safe use of public spaces in the context of international tensions and crises: How can we ensure that the city remains a safe place for democratic expression during protest demonstrations? How can we intervene in digital public spaces in terms of monitoring and preventing urban tensions? - On Friday morning from 9-10 am (R3), Head of Digital Prevention Sebastian Jørgensen, and Deputy Director Lotte Fast Carlsen, will head the how to session - How to understand and prevent hate, extremism, and disinformation online. At the session they present our Safe Digital City initiative and the challenges of hate, extremism, and disinformation that takes place on digital platforms. Addressing these challenges requires a systematic understanding of why, where, and how the local hate is formed and spread online. The aim of the session is to foster a discussion on existing digital prevention structures, inspire the participants with new tools, methods, and promising practices from three selected safe digital cities and ultimately, to help cities develop unique concepts and inspirations for safeguarding their digital democracies. - And lastly, on Friday from 11 am - 12.30 pm., Nordic Pioneer Prize winner 2022 Luqman Wadood will speak at the plenary session - Renewing our democratic practices, linking security, democracy and cities. The session discusses the gap between citizens and institutions widens, fostering the rise of authoritarian movements that challenge the very validity of democratic systems, as well as mistrust - even distrust fuelled by disinformation campaigns. We look very much forward to attend the conference and experience how European cities can learn from our Nordic member cities and vice versa. Democracies in Europe are under numerous threats which demand further cross-European cooporation on all levels. Sign up to the conference and gain first-hand knowledge about the newest research, tools and strategies on democracy building and prevention work:    https://lnkd.in/eFRrXnkP #security #safety #prevention #democracy #inclusion #conference #share