WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Obama’s State Department is using college students to fight terrorism through Facebook, Twitter and other “peer-to-peer” marketing efforts.

Students from around the world convened at a recent P2P: Challenging Extremism event in Washington, D.C. last week to present marketing concepts to government officials working to curb radical Islamic recruitment online, VICE News reports.

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Teams of students from West Point Military Academy, the University of Cincinnati, University College of London, Pakistan’s Lahore Institute of Management Sciences and dozens of others as far away as Switzerland were recruited by Edventure Partners on behalf of the State Department to participate in a marking contest. It’s the third semester in a row the department has hosted the program.

The idea is to use social media and other channels online to project an “extremism-is-not-cool” vibe the government wants to grow into an anti-extremism movement, though several experts told the news site the effort is a massive waste of time.

Assistant Secretary of State Evan Ryan said the government believes America’s college students are in the best position to impact youth who are “vulnerable to recruitment,” and help “make them feel less isolated, part of a community, and give them a purpose.”

VICE News described the D.C. contest as a sort of “anti-jihad science fair” that included a mix of students, journalists, and government officials and an array of different online campaigns aimed at subtly nudging potential terrorists back to reality.

The University of Cincinnati’s team, for example, aimed to reach teens who like video games because ISIS has used imagery from games like Grand Theft Auto in its propaganda materials, and also because “gamers” tend to be more isolated and vulnerable to recruitment.

The team invited students to play Grand Theft Auto on a “video-game bus” as part of their campaign, then spoke with participants about how terrorists target them.

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“I think raising awareness about how vulnerable that community is will have a positive impact,” team member Emma Parlette told VICE news.

The winning team, from Pakistan’s Lahore Institute, dubbed its campaign “FATE – From Apathy to Empathy” and organized workshops and concerts and other events to highlight the “apathy towards violence,” said LUMS team member Mashal Imran.

The group also devised a really nice website with posters of folks holding posters with messages to #ChallengeExtremism, and also talked with underprivileged kids about their message.

“We live in a country that deals with terror on a daily basis,” Imran said. “But there’s a tremendous amount of apathy towards that violence.”

LUMS Assistant Professor Taimur Rahman posted to Facebook about the team’s big win, which comes with $5,000 to expand the its efforts, The News Teller reports.

“We won first prize,” he wrote. “The presentation went like clock work, the entire hall gave us a standing ovation, and their applause and praise would not end. The judges remarked that media studies students should learn from LUMS team how to make a confident and energetic presentation. Proud of my students Abeera, Samey Basil Mashal and Usman.”

Other team members spoke about the victory with Pakistan’s Daily Times.

Amanda Rogers, a postdoctoral fellow at the Transcultural Violence Initiative at Georgia State, is writing a book about ISIS’ recruiting efforts and doesn’t think the government’s P2P scheme will work. The State Department’s filer for the P2P contest was the laughing stock of Middle East researchers, who mocked the government’s “naïve earnestness,” she told VICE News.

“I don’t doubt their good intentions,” Rogers said, “but I don’t see a real understanding of what drives the phenomenon in the first place.”

“Everything online is seen as propaganda in the jihadist space,” she continued. “I’m sorry, but I really think it’s counterproductive for State to try something like this – all these teams will be just branded as propagandists.”

Alberto Fernandez, who led a highly criticized effort by Obama to confront terrorists online in 2011, seems to agree with Rogers.

“Students get an extracurricular grade, or a nice cadet gets interested in the Middle East — they aren’t bad things, they just aren’t sufficient,” he told Vice NEWS. “But people mistake activity for progress — the administration is just shouting: we are doing something, look, we got kids tweeting!”