The new winner of the 2013 Deutsche Welle award for "Best Arabic Blog", young Mauritanian activist Ahmed Ould Jedou, talks about the biggest danger lurking online and how the internet can be a vehicle for positive change.

As one of the leaders of the 25 February Youth Movement, you campaign for social, political and economic reform. Is your blog part of this effort?

Blogging for me is a space for electronic resistance and for the spread of a culture of human rights. It is the victory of humanity and stands in the face of tyranny... .

How can young bloggers fight the growing online influence of extremism?

The internet is an open space for everyone and for constructive and destructive ideas. Blogging is an intermediary to transmit enlightened ideas and to fight against tyranny, corruption, and of course, extremism, terrorism and similar trends.

In our time, extremist and sectarian voices are rising, calling for killing in the name of religion.

Bloggers can confront this phenomenon by launching campaigns to explain to the public its seriousness and show the crime and misery of devastating obscurantist takfirist ideas... .

What are you and fellow moderate bloggers up against?

There is a sense of fear that terrorist extremist groups recruit some young people through the internet, and they have already been doing that for some time. They are widespread via the network of terrorist forums, social networking sites and media publications available online. They are broadcasting heavily their poison, trying to attract young people to engage in destructive operations and inciting [them] toward the path of murder, violence and destruction.

How are these groups able to attract followers?

Young people suffer from unemployment, injustice and limited prospects, and their future has no horizon. This makes many of them reach the stage of frustration and despair, rendering them easy prey for all propagators of nihilist ideas, such as extremist groups that promote the idea that if you blow yourself up, you will enter paradise and receive virgins as a reward.

Jihadist groups claim they are fighting tyranny, which drives some young people to engage with them. However, after the Arab Spring... youth found a new path for change and for standing in the face of tyranny and grasping their rights in their own hands.

I think that if the approach of civil resistance is supported among young people, this will stop the development and penetration of extremist groups among youth.

Magharebia: Anything else you want to say to young people in our region?

Ould Jedou: If we achieve a state of justice, law and citizenship, we will ensure a prosperous future... I also ask Maghreb youth for openness to each other in order to share ideas, which could be the nucleus to activate the grand Maghreb Union on peaceful foundations and under democratic governments.