OSPREY

Public-facing professionals (PFPs), including politicians, reporters, teachers, emergency services staff, and police officers, operate in the public eye and often face significant repercussions in their private lives due to their visibility. They are vulnerable to online harassment, unwanted identification, ‘trial by social media’ and threats to themselves or their families. 

To address these challenges, OSPREY will build a knowledge base for PFP-specific risks, harms, protection needs and harm impacts, focusing on mapping shared and profession-specific risk profiles and safeguarding requirements. 

The initiative will also develop tailored AI tools and solutions to enable secure online participation for PFPs. Additional resources will consist of toolkits and training programs to educate PFPs, their employers, and policymakers on preventing and managing online harms, as well as advocating for improved safety measures.

OSPREY also intends to raise public awareness about the impacts of online harm and promote strategies for allyship and bystander intervention. 

The OSPREY project is a 3-year collaboration led by CENTRIC, combining research institutes, police forces, and governmental bodies from across Europe and Canada. 

CENTRIC will lead OSPREY in addressing these challenges through the preparation of an empirical and conceptual foundation for the development of technical solutions. By engaging in focus groups and interviews to examine the full range of online threats, harms and their impacts, CENTRIC will design and develop four AI components for the detection and analysis of online harms to PFPs as well as their privacy exposure. Communication and engagement platforms and channels will be created to ensure OSPREY’s tools, resources and results continue to influence policy and practice beyond the project’s duration.