NOTIONES is a Latin lemma meaning “notions, ideas, investigations, cognisance” and therefore refers to “being informed”. The Call requires (a) to build a network of practitioners from security and intelligence services of EU MS & AC that has the objective (b) to support the needs of the security and intelligence services of the MS & AC for future security research programming. To address these requirements, NOTIONES consortium includes: (a) 15 practitioners from military, civil, financial, judiciary, local, national and international polices, coming from 9 EU MS and 6 AC. These practitioners, together with the other consortium members, grant a complete coverage of the 4 EU main areas: West Europe (PT, ES, UK, FR, IT, DE, AT), North Europe (FI, DK, SE, EE, LV), Middle Europe (PO, SK, UK), Middle East (IL, TR, GE, BG, BA, MK) for a total of 21 countries; (b) experts in security research programming. The NOTIONES’ S&T Coordinator is one of the 50 members of ESRAB and of the 64 members of ESRIF, the two Committees charged by the EC to outline its funding policy related to security research programming. In addition to that, the NOTIONES’ consortium includes 5 partners of PYTHIA and SOLOMON (Z&P, EXPSYS, ICSA, BDI, LESO), the two projects outlining the EDA/EC future defence research programming. The monitoring of technologies and the definition of requirements and recommendations for their industrialization will provide a great advantage to practitioners in the fields of intelligence and security. Through an iterative cycle, the output recommendations will be synthesized into specifications that can be provided to industry and academy across Europe, providing tangible benefits to those organisations engaged in intelligence and security. The results of the NOTIONES project, which has a lifetime of five years, will be presented to the broad intelligence community in workshops and conferences and will contribute to the definition of further security and intelligence research

The extreme growth and adoption of Social Media, in combination with their poor governance and the lack of quality control over the digital content being published and shared, has led information veracity to a continuous deterioration. Current approaches entrust content verification to a single centralised authority, lack resilience towards attempts to successfully “game” verification checks, and make content verification difficult to access and use. In response, SocialTruth’s ambition is to create an open, democratic, pluralistic and distributed ecosystem that allows easy access to various verification services (both internal and third-party), ensuring scalability and establishing trust in a completely decentralized environment. The distinctive advantages are: a) avoidance of vendor lock-in through access to configurable combinations of various content analytics and verification services (with support for text, image and video content) via standard Application Programming Interfaces; b) distributed trust and reputation establishment powered by blockchain technology, ensuring immutability and auditability, revealing information cascades and empowering an information veracity observatory; c) integration of lifelong learning approach for detection of new paradigms of fake news; d) easy interaction through a Digital Companion that allows convenient everyday access of individual users to verification services from within their browsers. SocialTruth will benefit: a) Individual users to verify the validity of Social Media content and prevent misinformation spread; b) Media organisations, content authors and journalists to boost their investigative capabilities by enabling improved cross-checking of various multimedia information sources; c) Search engines, Social Media platforms and e-advertising networks to improve information veracity and contribute into a more sustainable and quality-oriented web and social media ecosystem.

The underlyingassumption of the project proposal, in line with the UN Security Council recommendations (Resolution n. 2178, September 2014) and the Commission “European Agenda on Security”2015-2020(28.4.2015, COM(2015) 185 final), is that in order to contrast successfully violent extremism,what is neededis a more balanced response to terrorism,combining repressive (protective) measures with preventive measures, in a comprehensive approach in collaboration withactors of civil society and the communitiesof reference, based on a firm commitment to respecting fundamental rights, promoting integration, cultural dialogue and fighting discrimination. To this end, a better understanding of factors constituting violent radicalisation in Europe is needed, which aims,through a multidisciplinary analysis,to a comprehensive view of the phenomenon, investigatingits root causes, in order to develop appropriate countermeasures, ranging from early detection methodologies to strategies, ways and techniques of counter-narrative, involving LEAs together with experts and civil society actors at local, national and European level. In addition, it is necessary to acknowledge that violent radicalization,especially in the case of jihadist extremism,goesmainly through narratives that: have specific characteristics and contents; use specific communication codes;are addressed to specific audiences; and spread in a multitude of ways, over the Internet, as well as by means of in-person communication exchanges that take place in families, schools, places of worship, local communities, etc. These narratives havebeen proven effective towards vulnerable groups such as young people, detainees, and people craving for revenge after having experienced what they perceive as injustices, either at personal or group level. Furthermore, due to this multifarious background, such extremism is characterised by single or group terrorist acts also reflecting a variety of influences and motivational dr