At a Glance

Thorsten Koch, MA, PgDip has been a writer and researcher since the year 1995. As a journalist, Koch has made a career in, successively, the fields of regional, IT, financial and economic, as well as in political reporting. What is more, Koch has been an NGO manager and consultant since 1996. He served, among other roles, as a Senior Expert on Mauritania for Amnesty International.

From 2017 onward, Koch has engaged in the areas of soft counter-extremism and countering hate speech, making use of the LinkedIn platform, where he has built a large following and with his respective posts attaining around 2,000 impressions per day. To date, the non-profit initiative Policyinstitute.net maintains four project websites:

Emphasis is placed on soft counter-extremism, on means to avert hate speech and to grapple with disinformation, so to help stakeholders implement soft solutions in order to maintain good order and democratic values. Notable tasks on the way to publication on Policyinstitute.net has been entrusted on volunteer staff.

de-news.net is Koch’s second venture. It used to consist of the two English-language news projects GermanPolicy.com and GermanCorrespondent.com only. However, more recently, the website journal-allemand.com was added, containing selected pieces of news about Germany in the French language. All content provided by de-news.net is carefully and professionally selected, researched, and formulated.

Koch’s latest initiative in the realm of news is hightechPRIME.com. The website will carry the latest trends in electronics.

Overall portfolio at a glance:

  • journalism, media and communications
  • soft counter-extremism
  • preventing and countering hate speech
  • countering mis-/disinformation
  • capacity building in the north of Africa
  • IT reporting
  • human rights

Underscoring Koch’s proficiency in his fields of expertise, he holds an MA in Mass Communications with Merit, a Postgraduate Diploma in Islamic Studies with Distinction, as well as a certificate equivalent to a CAS in Migration and Society.


 Further Reading: