MOTRA consolidates academic, bureaucratic and police collaboration under the banner of extremism research. Since December 2019, MOTRA has operated under joint funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education (BMBF), Interior (BMI), and Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) as a five‑year civil‑security research initiative (€12.3 million, Dec 2019–Nov 2024). Coordinated by multiple German university and practice partners, the current consortium includes over twenty institutions, such as the University of Hamburg, TU Darmstadt, GIGA Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Police University and Saxony-Anhalt’s Police Academy. The project deploys various forms of monitoring (combining surveys, protest-event tracking, statistical data and open‑source internet analysis) to detect developments in alleged Islamist, right-wing or other radicalizing mobilizations. Its findings are published in the annual MOTRA Monitor and thematic briefings addressing extremist hate, online radicalization, and disinformation. In 2025, a second funding phase was awarded, running through 2028, with a total cost of €8.0 million, of which the Hamburg sub-cluster independently received €3.5 million.
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Monitoring and Transfer Platform Radicalization (MOTRA)
German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), German Federal Ministry...See all
German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), "German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ)" See less
German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), "Criminological Central Office (Kriminologische Zentralstelle e.V.), Wiesbaden", Berghof Foundation, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) [Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH], University of Hamburg, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, "GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies / Leibniz Institute for Global and Regional Studies, Hamburg"
Commentary:
MOTRA's expansive monitoring of protest movements and digital communications, though framed as preventive, raises sharp questions about institutional neutrality and the scope of state-aligned academic inquiry. Official language treats disinformation, anti-state protest and conspiracy theories as adjacent to extremist threat, encouraging a slippage between civil dissent and security risks. Data collection protocols remain unpublished, and the selection criteria for what constitutes dangerous speech are opaque. The growing budget and reach of the project, particularly through its €3.5 million Hamburg extension, suggest a long-term consolidation of surveillance capacity within nominally independent research settings. No formal mechanisms of public or parliamentary oversight appear to constrain MOTRA’s influence on policy. In effect, it repositions universities as auxiliary instruments of internal security, tasked not only with observing radicalism but with anticipating it, absent clear legal thresholds or broader democratic accountability.
MOTRA's expansive monitoring of protest movements and digital communications, though framed as preventive, raises sharp questions about institutional neutrality and the scope of state-aligned academic inquiry. Official language treats disinformation, anti-state protest and conspiracy theories as adjacent to extremist threat, encouraging a slippage between civil dissent and security risks. Data collection protocols remain unpublished, and the selection criteria for what constitutes dangerous speech are opaque. The growing budget and reach of the project, particularly through its €3.5 million Hamburg extension, suggest a long-term consolidation of surveillance capacity within nominally independent research settings. No formal mechanisms of public or parliamentary oversight appear to constrain MOTRA’s influence on policy. In effect, it repositions universities as auxiliary instruments of internal security, tasked not only with observing radicalism but with anticipating it, absent clear legal thresholds or broader democratic accountability.
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