SAFFRON is an international project whose acronym means “Semantic Analysis against Foreign Fighters Recruitment Online Network“. It is a European project that will last 2 years, with a budget of 672,244.62 euros co-financed by the Internal Security Fund of the European Union.

The purpose of SAFFRON is to create a system capable of supporting the Police Forces to quickly find ways to recruit foreign fighters by terrorist groups in Europe, with particular attention to ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

The project consists in studying the specific communication strategies for social media recruitment (eg narratives, arguments and myths used) adopted by these groups, and their evolution over time, as well as the identification of needs, values ​​and cultural and social contexts of the target.

• Objective 1: Implement and test a tool to be used by all the interested parties (who are also part of the consortium) to identify, in a timely manner, the recruitment activities of foreign and foreign fighters carried out via the web, and all signals (weak or strong) of the degree of radicalization of single individuals;
• Objective 2: Analyze the most recent trends regarding the recruitment of young Europeans by terrorist groups;
• Objective 3: Analyze the online communication strategy of the various terrorist groups and develop a social media campaign to counteract propaganda.