Project
PECAO · Peer education to counter antigypsyist online hate speech
The PECAO project aims to combat online hate speech against the Roma. Although approximately 12 million Roma people have lived in Europe for centuries, they are the most discriminated minority. PECAO utilises peer education and monitoring to change young people’s attitudes and actions directly while contributing to systemic policy change through advocacy efforts.
About the project
With approximately 12 million people living in Europe for centuries, the Roma are the continent’s biggest ethnic minority. At the same time, they are the most disliked and discriminated minority, with every third person not wanting to have a Roma neighbour and 80% of Roma living at the risk of poverty.
Antigypsyism – a specific form of racism against people who are perceived as ‘Gypsies’ in the public imagination, is at the core of the social exclusion and discrimination of Roma.
PECAO countered antigypsyist hate speech online by working with young people, using a combination of peer education and monitoring to obtain two-fold results: the peer education methodology will achieve a direct change in attitudes and actions of a high number of young people, and the monitoring contributed to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.
Objectives
- To raise awareness of young people in ten countries of the adverse impact of hate speech on Roma and of the importance to report antigypsyist online hate speech.
- To train young Roma as peer educators and to empower them to monitor and report hate speech online
- To raise awareness of other stakeholders of antigypsyist hate speech in online media
- To advocate for anti-discrimination policies that take into account the online sphere as well as antigypsyism as a bias motivation.
PEER EDUCATION
50 peer educators will be trained to organise local peer education activities with other young people, supporting them in recognising, countering and reporting antigypsyist hate speech online.
MONITORING
To better understand the phenomena, young people will monitor online media for online hate speech, and monitoring results will inform advocacy.
ADVOCACY
To create a more systemic change, all partners will target policy-makers and online media to raise their awareness of antigypsyist hate speech and ask for better measures to tackle it.
COMMUNICATIONS
We will accompany the whole project with a strong social media presence, raising a wider audience’s awareness of the negative impact of antigypsyist hate speech and countering it with more positive narratives.
Download project materials
Workshop materials
Standard workshop materials in EN, BG, CZ, HU, RO and ES on antigypsyism, hate speech, monitoring, advocacy and awareness-raising
Media monitoring
Advocacy
Synthesis report
Consortium
This project is funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020). The content of the project’s outputs represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility.
Funding from the Google.Org Impact Challenge on Safety in the framework of ERGO Network’s project Peer education to counter antigypsyist online hate speech.