 So I have the pleasure of introducing our first in-person speaker, Dr. Emma Haywood is a lecturer in journalism, politics, and communications. She researches the impact of radio on women's empowerment in conflict-affected areas. Haywood is currently working on a two-year British Academy-funded project investigating local radio involvement in NGO activities in conflict-sensitive areas using the West Bank as a case study. Her research has investigated European representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 2006 to 2008. She has also examined Russian, French, UK, and Palestinian audience perceptions of the coverage of the Gaza War in 2014. Her book, European Foreign Conflict Reporting, a comparative analysis of public news providers, is published by Routledge. Please help me welcome to the stage Dr. Emma Haywood. So follow that. Or half the world's global population are online. Internet use is up throughout the world. In Africa, for example, there are over 20% more internet users this year than there were last year. Mobile phone use is huge and growing. There are over half the global population access their internet using their mobile devices. There are over 2 billion social media accounts. Your average internet user spends over four hours a day online. Well, these figures are all very well. But what about the individual? What about the individual who has no access to the internet? I want you to imagine, just for a minute, being one of those people who has got no access to electricity. You can't charge your mobile. You can't understand the information on the screen in front of you, either because it's not in your local language or because you simply can't read. You have no money. You've been displaced. You can't afford a television. And actually having a computer is beyond your wildest dreams, even if you could read. So I'm talking about marginalised vulnerable groups, groups which are vulnerable to extremist recruitment, groups which are vulnerable to the effects of extremism, where infrastructure has been destroyed, if it was there to start with. And I'm talking about the radio. This is where the radio, that traditional medium, comes in. Well, the radio is that simple box in your kitchen, in your phone, on your mobile, which most of us in this room take for granted. Most of us in this room actually aren't really all that aware how much we use it on a daily basis. And yet for some, it's a lifeline. For some, it's the only source of information they have. But the radio doesn't get the information that it deserves. Social media gets all the attention. Social media is better. Social media will use up the radio. But radio is cheap. It's easy to use. It only requires batteries to run. You can use it via your mobile. And even if you haven't got a source of electricity, the chances are you can charge up your mobile at a charging bank at your local market. I didn't realise the impact of radio until I started researching it in detail in my work in Gaza, in the West Bank, and now in a large project in Africa. I see how it brings communities together, how it informs people, and how it unites people and brings people together. What I want you to do now is imagine that you're a young person. You have no job. And you're seeking someone to blame. You're seeking a way out. And your local community radio station is being paid by extremists to broadcast their message. And this local community station is trying to recruit you as a fighter. This recruitment process is ongoing. And yet, you listen to the radio. You listen to the top-down messages which are being pushed out to you. There's no other source of information. There's no other source of entertainment. But surely, if radio can be used to broadcast propaganda alongside social media and so on, it can also be used to broadcast counter-propaganda messages or alternative messages, messages which can be refined to target specific audiences like you. In your language, in a language you understand, in a style you understand, on a subject you can relate to, with people present that you can relate to. You can even ring in. You can have your say. You can debate a subject with community leaders, with religious leaders. And suddenly, you're contributing to your community. You're contributing to society with your participation. You're no longer just receiving messages. You're crafting them. You are now part of the solution. So let's take Ali, for example, or Ali Meister, as he prefers to be known. He's well known in his community in Difa, in Niger. And he's well known because he's often on the large commercial radio station which broadcasts from his town. He's well known for being on the radio, for talking about his experiences with extremist groups who have tried to recruit him as a fighter. He now uses the radio to broadcast counter-propaganda messages. He goes out into the community to talk to groups of young people, to the youth groups, and bring them all together. No other medium would allow him or enable him, quite so easily, to be a presenter, to convey a message to the local community. To go out and record a programme on location and to raise a positive profile to local youth. So what are we saying? Are we saying that radio can actually change people's lives? Can it actually have an impact on people? Well, let's have a look at children. As a result of the Boko Haram insurgency, as you know, hundreds of thousands of children left without schooling. But not only were they left without education, but they were displaced. But there was no possibility of building new schools for them or training new teachers for them to be taught. So had nothing been done, there would have been a whole generation of uneducated youth who had been sitting targets as Boko Haram recruits. So one solution was to educate these children over the radio. A simple solution, easy to implement, and one which can cover large areas. And it could be done so without major construction costs and without teacher training costs. It could also be implemented very quickly. So this is a project that was run by the American University of Nigeria and USAID. And they used radio and mobile technology to raise the appeal of Western education. This project taught basic English literacy and numeracy. And it used songs and radio dramas in the local language using characters that little children could relate to. And they were also synchronized... There we go. They were also synchronized activity workbooks. And they encouraged children to engage with the songs and the stories that they were listening to. And so radio was used to encourage children to imagine, to learn and to engage. But these programs, these lessons, more importantly were broadcast by a relatively new radio station, Dandalkura, which broadcast in the Lake Chad area, where, as we were hearing before, Boko Haram had a monopoly to spread its extremist narrative. There was little competition for credible information. And yet this is a gap that's now been filled by this radio station. This education program was broadcast over 18 months and over 20,000 children who otherwise would not have been reached have now received basic education. And this is through the radio. The project was so popular and successful that it was continued for a further six months by another local radio station after the initial funding had run out. So how else can radio impact people's lives? How else has it been used in this fight against extremism? Well, simply by providing information by news programs, people can receive an alternative message that it enables them to question messages that they previously had been receiving. Give audiences programs and then bring on experts to debate that subject, to debate the subject. So I'm currently working on a large project with Studio Kalanga, which is a radio station, which a radio studio, run by the Swiss-based media development organization Von Das Yacht-Yekandel. And it is using this approach to broadcast independent information programs over, it broadcasts from the capital of Niger using satellite and then it broadcasts them to its network of community and commercial radio stations who then rebroadcast them using FM networks. So it then brings on experts, moderate religious leaders, community leaders, people in positions of trust who can be believable to discuss this, to debate the subject. So what is important, though, is that these programs are broadcast multiple times in multiple languages throughout the country, which means that these alternative messages can reach the population. What's more, we're using the prevailing radio culture to take this further. The culture of listening clubs is widespread in many, many countries. And this is, they enable the ordinary person to take part in public life. People will sit around an ordinary radio set outside their houses in the streets and wherever they drink tea and they discuss the radio program. They discuss it together. It's a socializing medium. And if it is used, and if radio is used and used well to broadcast positive messages, if it is targeted correctly in the correct language to the correct people, it can make a difference. It can have a ripple effect. In Niger, for example, which is affected by the conflict which is spilling over its borders, Studio Kalangu and my own project were trying to contribute to empowering women. It recognizes not only the gender inequality of this poverty struck country, but it also recognizes that women play an essential role as policy shapers, educators, community builders, activists and so on. And it's an important role, not just in developing the country but in fighting extremism as well. Because it's widely accepted that the capacity of women to sport and react to extremism in their families ranges greatly depending on levels of education, social awareness and geographic remoteness. Those who don't have as much formal education struggle to recognize warning signs. They may perceive changes in their children as simply them becoming more religious and this may be considered a good change. So an obvious solution is to make and keep women informed and listening groups are an ideal solution for this. So this isn't quite so easy when women aren't allowed to come to mix listening groups for the very reason that they're mixed. So what we did over the summer was set up a network of women's only listening groups in using community radio. So community radio would broadcast independent information and then women come to these women's only associations in their hundreds and receive information, discuss information about warning signs but also other things like health, education and so on. And they pass on this information and the ripple effect continues. And then the community builds get stronger and the resilience to extremism is built. So the methods and the techniques of using the radio continue. So radio has a role, an important role and one which isn't going to go away just because of the growth in the internet. There's a picture of my women's only listening group. But in short, we need to ensure that radio and particularly community radio can thrive and can continue to push out these alternative messages to all forms, to all affected groups and these are alternative messages to extremist ones. So radio may be a traditional medium but it's a socializing one, it's sociable and it can bring people together and can do so in a positive manner. So radio is not past its prime. It must be used and it mustn't be disregarded. Thank you.