MIRROR - Migration-Related Risks caused by misconceptions of Opportunities and Requirement
The aim of the project is to develop an integrated platform, a set of tools, as well as a systematic methodology for the comprehensive inter-media analysis of the perception of Europe, the detection of discrepancies between perception of and reality in Europe, and the creation of awareness for the impact of such misconceptions.
MIRROR is a research project that aims to generate a greater understanding of how people (from outside the European Union) perceive Europe as a destination for migration. The results of the project will form the basis for policy recommendations and the development of the MIRROR platform and toolset for effective cross-media perception analysis.
The MIRROR project is broken down into work packages to structure work to be done during the runtime and to enable multiple teams to simultaneously work on different components in the project. The University of Malta is responsible for two of those work packages. The aim of the first is (a) to analyse threats related to the misperception of Europe heavily relying on existing threat analysis results, (b) to integrate results created in the MIRROR project into threat analysis and risk assessment methodologies used by border control across Europe, and (c) to provide border control & foreign policy bodies with a set of legal, ethical, technological, organizational etc. actionable insights, best practices and recommendations with respect to the use of social media in addressing security challenges generated by migration flows. The aim of the second is to define and operate pilot studies in Sweden, Austria and Malta to validate the MIRROR approach and the technical solutions developed through the target communities of border agencies and policy makers and to assess to which degree the developed solution meets the expectations of the target communities. The results of each pilot are closely monitored and fed to the technical team, thus allowing the MIRROR approach to be improved from one pilot to the next.
The multidisciplinary consortium consists of fourteen partners from seven countries from research and industry, as well as practitioners. The consortium will cooperate to gain a better understanding of how Europe is perceived abroad and the mechanisms involved in the process. The MIRROR Project was launched in June 2019 and has a time period of three years.