Combating Hate Speech Online

The Council of Europe's project against hate speech, racism and discrimination in its online expression is searching for participants to attend a preparatory seminar for the campaign.

The seminar will take place in the European Youth Centre, Strasbourg (FR) from 10 to 12 October 2012.

Young People Combating Hate Speech Online is a project of the Council of Europe's youth sector which is running between 2012 and 2014. The project aims to combat racism and discrimination in its online expression of hate speech by equipping young people with the competences necessary to recognise and act against such human rights violations. The forms of hate speech covered by the project corresponds to a variety of hate-crime, including anti-semitism, homophobia, islamaphobia, sexism, racism and xenophobia.

Hate speech as such is not a new issue in the human rights debate, its online dimension and the potential impact this offers gives new reasons for concern among young people and youth organisations. While easier to monitor and counter in mainstream professional media, the challenge posed by its online manifestation is the incapacity to monitor and measure its impact. While the activity of static websites can be easily traced, most of the action is actually happening in the encounter spaces (i.e. social networking sites), which are far harder to monitor and analyse.

Therefore this project will particularly take into account the online platforms and media where young people are most present such as social networks, video sharing sites, blogs, etc. The project - and the campaign associated to it - includes a dimension of countering specific hate speech on-line and another, broader objective based on netcitizenship and human rights education, of raising awareness about the risks of speech that bashes the values of human rights, equality in dignity and intercultural dialogue which are at the core of open and tolerant societies.

This is a fantastic opportunity for activists and youth NGOs to get involved in the project.

The application deadline is 15 September 2012 and more information can be found by clicking here.

Francine Fernandes