A WEE County university student is taking part in the fifth Peer to Peer Global Challenge for Facebook – designed to help combat online extremism.

Stacey Lange has teamed up with two others to launch the campaign #GenerationProud, which focuses on giving young people permission to question the values of their parents and communities, to see if they think it is right for them.

The 31-year-old, a digital media student at the University of Stirling, is working on the project alongside Joseph Elton, 22, from London, and Jacob Cawthon, 21, from Columbus, Ohio.

She said: “Originally we were just doing a mock campaign as part our our social media marketing module on our course.

“It was a real global Facebook competition for students that we were using as a base for our mock campaign.

“We saw the potential of the campaign for real-life applications and so decided to implement it as a small group.”

There are a few rounds in the competition and the finalists will go to Washington DC.

The group's campaign will be based primarily on Facebook and Instagram, using Twitter and Snapchat as secondary platforms.

The aim is to get people to send their selfies via social media, so they can collage and put it back out, to show this is a campaign inclusive of and for all online communities.

Stacey, from Alva, said: “Our primary research conducted via face-to-face surveys indicated that although a lot of people did not recognise the term 'online extremism' all but a few could then give examples of having seen it in action – whether it be political or religious etc.

“We also managed to confirm our hypothesis that most people get their values from their parents and communities and that they intend to pass their values on to their children.

“We need to make it 'OK' for people to question their parents values to see if they are relevant to them and feel 'right'.

“Again this is not about saying your views are wrong, its about saying maybe they are not right for me – it's a totally positive campaign.

“This is something that they can do in their everyday lives.”

People can show support for the team by raising awareness, liking the social media pages and posts and following them.

Visit the campaign website at www.generationproud.com