Project Overview – DEMO-WORK
Digital public spheres have long since become central social spaces for young people. This brings with it the challenge that social media are increasingly acting as catalysts for radicalization processes—a development to which Digital Streetwork is responding appropriately. However, the knowledge, conceptual standards, and implicit practical routines in the field of digital radicalization prevention remain highly fragmented. We are addressing this gap in professionalization: The “DEMO-WORK” research and knowledge transfer project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, collects and systematizes this scattered expert and practical knowledge and makes it accessible via a knowledge-based system ( similar to GPT). The AI tool FIDAA (Specialized Information on Digital Outreach Work) thus draws on a curated knowledge base to avoid typical language model errors such as hallucinations or misinformation, and is intended to serve practitioners as a guide for orientation, training, and reflection, while automated communication with the target audience is explicitly ruled out in the spirit of social work professionalism.
Conceptually, the project is based on the distinction that democratic radicalism—as an emancipatory force for human rights and change—is not pathological in and of itself, whereas radicalization describes a process that leads to a dogmatic, anti-pluralistic narrowing of thought and a focus on enemy stereotypes.
The project, carried out in cooperation between Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, and the Catholic University of Applied Sciences North Rhine-Westphalia, is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation as part of the funding program “Transformational Knowledge on Democracies in Transition—Transdisciplinary Perspectives.” Our team combines academic and practical expertise from social work, the sociology of technology, and computer science/AI research. The project is also affiliated with the Institute for Democratic Culture (IdK) at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences.
Professionalization of
Digital Outreach Work
via
Consultative AI Support
A project by
Funded by
Das Team
Prof. Dr. Nele Wulf
Academic Research
Nele Wulf is a professor of Digitalization and Social Work at katho Aachen. As a sociologist of technology, she conducts research and teaches on the transformations and shaping of social coexistence in the digital age, and explores the possibilities for shaping human-technology relationships in various projects. Her work focuses on the professionalization of digital forms of work, socio-ecological sustainability, and the role of visions of the future in innovation and transformation processes.
As part of the “DEMO-WORK” research and transfer project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, she leads the integration of scientific and practical insights. These insights are drawn from expert interviews, digital ethnography, and document analyses. On this basis, she is responsible for the design and evaluation of the knowledge-based AI support system FIDAA (Specialized Information on Digital Outreach Work) to provide a professionally sound guidance and reflection tool for practitioners in digital streetwork.
Christina Dinar
Academic Research
Christina Dinar is interested in digital public spheres and technological developments shaped by communities that develop their own rules for addressing hate speech and disinformation. For her, this creates a digital space that is more diverse, democratic, and oriented toward the common good – and one in which social work also has its place and role. Drawing on her background in education, she co-developed the concept of “Digital Streetwork” with Cornelia Heyken, which adapts existing approaches to outreach support services to the digital environment.
In addition to her work as a research assistant on the DEMO-WORK project at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, she is pursuing her doctoral degree at KHSB Berlin/TU Berlin on digital outreach work in social media. Through this project, she is working to enable more professionals to gain in-depth experience with Digital Streetwork and to inspire them to embrace its application and the potential of the digital space.
David Döring
Academic Research
David Döring earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and currently works as a research assistant at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences on various projects related to artificial intelligence. He believes it is important not to view AI as an end in itself or a purely commercial tool, but rather to apply it strategically where it creates social value: to combat disinformation rather than to promote it. His professional profile is shaped by several years of interdisciplinary AI teaching at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences, where he introduces high school students, college students, and faculty from various disciplines to AI topics (programming, data science, and the use of language models). This has fostered a strong interest in explainable AI and in communicating technical content in non-technical contexts.
In the DEMO-WORK project, he is responsible for the technical implementation of the knowledge-based system, advises the team on technical issues, and ensures that even complex AI concepts remain understandable and transparent to all project participants.
Nils Fietkau
Academic Research
Nils Fietkau is a research associate at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences in the “Social Work, Health, and Media” department. His research focuses on habitus, education, and learning in a biographical context, and he is interested in how these are constituted in digital spaces—particularly in exploring the connections that can be drawn here to algorithmization and artificial intelligence. He is at home in social work contexts that aim to initiate transformation processes at the micro, meso, and macro levels and are dedicated to reducing social inequality. To this end, he has worked in practice in areas such as integration assistance, child and youth welfare, and youth education contexts.
In the DEMO-WORK project, he shares responsibility for the empirical research and analyzes the data to investigate how practitioners engage in professional digital outreach work within the context of their career trajectories.
Cornelia Heyken
Practice
Cornelia Heyken holds a master’s degree in educational sciences and linguistics. She has been working on various projects at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation since 2014; among other things, starting in 2015, she developed the “Digital Streetwork” concept together with Christina Dinar and later with Theresa Lehmann and Jerome Trebing. Since then, the concept has been continuously adapted, tested, and established for various fields of action and platforms. She also developed educational materials on the topic of hate speech, including forms of group-focused hostility, and, starting in 2016, built a network of trainers, which she continues to coordinate on a volunteer basis to this day. She is currently testing her “Pedagogical Community Management” (PCM) concept, developed in 2024, as part of an educational project addressing anti-Semitic content on TikTok and is working with Jerome Trebing on an educational consulting concept.
In the DEMO-WORK project, she focuses primarily on analyzing academic and formalized knowledge bases related to digital outreach work. She adapts these well-founded insights –combined with content she has developed herself – to precisely meet the needs of the AI prototype’s development.
Jerome Trebing
Practice
Jerome Trebing studied Social Work and Sociology and combines professional social work practice with academic reflection. As a certified anti-violence trainer, he has developed concepts and training programmes in the field of violence prevention and safeguarding, and has been working for many years in violence and radicalisation prevention within child and youth welfare services. At the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, he has been working together with Cornelia Heyken to further develop the concept of Digital Streetwork, with a particular focus on the professionalisation of digital social work and the exploration of gaming communities and other digital social spaces as fields of practice for social work.
Within the DEMO-WORK project, he contributes this hybrid perspective bridging practice and research. His work focuses on the ethnographic observation and analysis of Digital Streetwork practice as well as the development of professional standards that systematise social work knowledge and make it accessible for practitioners.