GEMS: Engaging with Gaming Community at RIKON 2024 – Bledar Feta & Ioanna Giakoumopoulou

The GEMS project attended RIKON 2024, the biggest convention of fantasy, science fiction, pop culture and games in Southeast Europe to present a panel under the title, Gaming and Extremism. RIKON 2024 in Rijeka is a flagship event for the gaming community, serving as a crucial platform for networking, knowledge exchange, and showcasing the latest innovations in gaming.

The panel was representative of the multidisciplinary approach in GEMS, bringing together GEMS Project Manager and Trinity College Dublin Researcher Neven Vukic, Bledar Feta, P/CVE Research Fellow at ELIAMEP, Darren Martin, member of An Garda Síochána (Irish Police), and Ioanna Giakoumopoulou, Assistant Researcher at ELIAMEP.

The participation of GEMS partners in gaming conventions and summits is a key component of the project’s strategy to reach one of its most important target audiences—gamers. By engaging directly with this community, GEMS aims to disseminate its objectives and outcomes effectively.

In accordance with the aim of the event, panellists outlined contemporary extremist risks associated with the gaming ecosystem focusing on how extremists are exploiting these platforms. Their different professional backgrounds enabled them to each elaborate on different aspects of the issue as seen by various sectors—academia, the policy community, and the police. This created an engaging atmosphere and meant that when the floor was opened to the audience for questions and interventions, there was an interest in all three sectors of the project.

The event was successful in relaying that extremist activity in digital gaming spaces is a complex challenge but what is crucial is the coordination with the gamers themselves. Gamers and developers in the audience seemed to accept the GEMS partners in cooperative spirit, making the visit effective and meaningful.

You can learn more about this event by visiting the official website of GEMS project here.