Hate speech – ERGO Network

Safer online spaces for Roma: Must be backed up by action!

Safer online spaces for Roma: Must be backed up by action!

Twitter believes that everybody should be empowered every day to speak their mind about issues that matter most to them and to be part of the public conversation.

Unfortunately, not everyone at Twitter has the same positive experience. Historically marginalised and underrepresented groups have important messages and ideas which can inspire everyone around the world and raise awareness about important issues in our societies. Individuals identifying with these groups, however, sometimes face harassment and abuse on the platform, which can jeopardize their freedom of expression.

Given our background and experience with antigypsyist hate speech online, Mustafa Jakupov, policy and project coordinator of ERGO network was invited to take part in the EMEA Safer Internet Day Summit on the 10th of February to make sure the Roma voices are heard.

We believe that everybody needs to feel safe online, to get active, and to speak up in front of a global audience.

The use of “innocent jokes” does not soften the online hate speech against Roma, but it perpetuates stereotypes and prejudices under an umbrella of humour where other aggressive comments and xenophobic spreads are distributed and multiplied. The recent example of the comedian Jimmy Carr in his show Dark Matter on Netflix proves this.

The British comedian has, in a recent Netflix stand-up special, said that:

“When people talk about the Holocaust, they are talking about the tragedy of 6 million Jewish lives lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies killed by the Nazis. Nobody ever wants to talk about it because nobody ever wants to talk about the positive aspects.”

The whole statement was dressed up as an edgy and even more – educational – joke, playing the card of “if you don’t laugh, you are just not smart enough to understand it”. However, although in his later performances Jimmy Carr has kept to his image of a brave honest man making fun of serious matters, the hypocrisy lies on the surface. He is not making fun of Holocaust per se, only targeting the two most vulnerable groups of the survivors (Roma and Jehovah’s Witnesses). The comedian is acting as a regular bully attacking only those, who he knows will not fight back – and thus feeding into the general discourse of antigypsyism and hate speech.

Hate speech as a manifestation of antigypsyism needs particular attention because of its multiplier effect:

It influences public opinion, fuels tension, and paves the way for discrimination and hate crimes. Online media plays a particular role in spreading and inciting hate speech. It strengthens stereotypes, uses offensive language, denies, or trivializes antigypsyism.
Through social media hate speech reaches millions of people and allows perpetrators to anonymously incite hatred and violence.

‘Haters’ do not use the term Roma but some hybrid terms that all society acknowledges as Roma. This requires IT companies to have knowledge of these terms, or in other words, the IT companies must keep up with the different forms of online antigypsyism.

Living in the times of Covid-19, online antigypsyism is becoming normalized for the whole society and not just the right-wing supporters. Laws are important, but prevention should be more highlighted. Therefore, creating a space for Roma where they can create content for counter-narratives is important, because finding quality content on Roma is hard. Another weak link in antigypsyism is the data collection as this will show the dimensions of hate speech.

The use of artificial intelligence to detect hate speech before it is posted is being developed, however, this might be tricky as the language is evolving as well and the AI models must adapt. On the other hand, people must be present as they will need to finalize the decision. This brings us to the importance of filing complaints.

Collaboration between CSO and IT platforms is crucial and there should be mutual learning and recommendations input. This also needs to be reflected in a form of cooperation between institutions, media, and CSO’s, where opportunities for spreading counter-narratives are supported, a distinctive law framework is created to criminalize hate speech and effective mechanisms are put in place that would involve CSO’s in the development of AI models and software in order to avoid further discrimination of marginalized groups in online places.

Is the internet available and safe for Roma?

Throughout the last years, Safer Internet Day on 9 February has become an important event, addressing the issues of online safety and digital dignity. From cyberbullying to social networking to digital identity, each year Safer Internet Day aims to raise awareness of emerging online issues and current concerns. This year, ERGO Network is highlighting the issues of online safety and digital dignity for Roma.

Online safety for Roma

From an era in which individuals communicated their ideas mostly orally and only to small numbers of other people, we have moved on to an era in which people can make free use of a variety of channels for instant communication to a large audience. More and more people make use of online platforms not only to interact with each other, but also to share news. The detachment created by being enabled to write, without any obligation to reveal oneself directly, means that this new medium of virtual communication allows people to feel greater freedom in the way they express themselves¹. Unfortunately, though, there is also a dark side to this system. Social media has become a fertile ground for antigypsyism, which frequently results in the use of insulting and offensive language towards Roma.

Antigypsyist hate speech has always been present in our societies. With the use of social media, however, the phenomenon has achieved a status of normalized online behavior, where Roma are targeted and become victims of cyberhate, which further develops into practices of hate crimes. Hate speech should not be perceived from the prism of an online insult; hate speech is connected to hate crimes, as it directly influences affecting citizens outside of the internet space. It results into violation of the rights of Roma as citizens, causing direct discrimination and threats, and in some cases result in offline violence or hate crimes.

As an example we can pinpoint the recent events in Bitola, North Macedonia towards the Roma community in September and October 2020. In this period hate speech against the Roma community on social networks was drastically intensified, which resulted in the occurrence of several cases of police brutality.²

Being aware of the issue of online antigypsyism³, ERGO Network through the PECAO project aims to counter antigypsyist hate speech online by working with young people, using a combination of peer education and monitoring in order to obtain two-fold results: Peer education to achieve a direct change in attitudes and actions of a high number of young people, and monitoring to contribute to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.

Digital dignity for Roma

Much has changed with the pandemic and many of us thought that living in the 21^st century and with the available technologies adapting would be easy. However, the pandemic made the digital divide and social exclusion of vulnerable communities such as Roma even more visible.

According to the FRA study from 2016⁴, over 40 % of Roma in the EU Member State Bulgaria cannot afford a private computer, smartphone or internet access. With the Covid-19 pandemic, many of these long-standing issues around discrimination, educational exclusion and limited access to new technologies have been brought forward.

Beside all the direct health risks, Covid-19 deepened the existing inequalities and made the questions of poverty and lack of access to proper educational services for Roma children more visible than ever. It made clear that care, respect and human dignity in the digital age for Roma have been forgotten or pushed aside. Digital literacy and access to utilities or technologies cause Roma to be left behind; as Roma with no access to electricity or the internet cannot connect, benefit from online education or online services.

The way forward

When it comes to creating a safer internet space for Roma and ensure digital dignity, ERGO Network believes that we need to work on:

- Higher awareness of journalists’ ethic commissions on the prevalence and impact of antigypsyist hate speech online, leading to improved self-regulation guidelines.

- Higher awareness of national equality bodies and other relevant state institutions on the prevalence and impact of antigypsyist hate speech online, leading to better programmes targeting antigypsyism.

- Stronger adherence by IT companies to the Code of Conduct on countering online hate speech.

- Better data collection on hate crime and hate speech disaggregated by ethnicity and gender to allow analysis of trends by member states.

- Stronger condemnation of antigypsyist hate speech in the public discourse.

- More positive narratives promoted by young people online to counter antigypsyist hate speech.

- Reducing the digital divide by investing in access to utilities and technologies, thus preventing the exclusion of Roma from the internet space, as well as by creating digital support and literacy programs.

1 Thirty years of research into hate speech: topics of interest and their evolution: Alice Tontodimamma, Eugenia Nissi, Annalina Sarra & Lara Fontanella

2 Hate speech in social media and the impact on the Roma community: Romalitico, Marija Sulejmanova

3 https://ergonetwork.org/pecao/

4 https://minorityrights.org/trends2020/bulgaria/

PECAO’s workshop materials and media monitoring tool now available

PECAO’s workshop materials and media monitoring tool are available for download

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 its 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 will counter antigypsyist hate speech online by working with young people, using a combination of peer education and monitoring in order 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 will contribute to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.

By using the standard workshop materials created by the consortium and translated in the available languages (EN, BG, CZ, HU, RO and ES), participants of the workshop will be able to understand the phenomena of antigypsyist hate speech and its impact on Roma, as well as the importance to monitor and report that speech online. Furthermore, the participants of the workshop can engage into advocacy and work towards better anti-discrimination policies by addressing antigypsyism as bias motivation, as well as raise awareness among various stakeholders about the antigypsyist hate speech in online media.

The project consortium of PECAO consists of the following partners and funding:

Funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) with co-funding from Google.org:

Integro Association (Bulgaria)
Nevo Parudimos (Romania)
Federation of Catalan Roma Associations (FAGIC), Spain
Romaversitas (Hungary)
Romanonet (Czech Republic)
ERGO Network (Belgium)

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:

La Voix des Rroms (France)
Upre Roma (Italy)
Roma Women Fund Chiricli (Ukraine)
RROMA (North Macedonia)
Roma Active Albania (Albania)

The standard workshop materials are available in English, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian and Spanish language for the moment. Should you have any additional requests for session outlines examples, exercises, or need for additional information concerning the topic, please write an e-mail to ERGO network at info@ergonetwork.org by adding the word PECAO to your subject line.

The materials consist of the following documents:

M01 – Objectives, Impact and Methodology
M02 – Aim and objectives of the workshop
M03 – Programme of the workshop
M04 – Non-formal education
M05 – Protocol form for monitoring media content with hate speech

As well as the media monitoring tool with a glossary available within the tool.

You can access the materials here and media monitoring tool here.

Publicity Disclaimer:

This publication was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC 2014-2020) and Google.Org Impact Challenge on Safety. The European’s Commission’s and Google.Org’s support for the production does not constitute and endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views of the authors only, and the European Commission and Google.Org cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained there.

PECAO peer educators training online and offline

PECAO peer educators training online and offline

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the work we usually do and the way we implement our projects. ERGO Network together with its partners in the framework of the “Peer education to counter antigypsyist hate speech” (PECAO) project adapted to this new situation and moved on with the project implementation.

Peer educators are the most crucial part of PECAO. They receive training to conduct peer education workshops and activities with other young people, as well as monitor and report hate speech online.

Due to the restrictions and health measures in place, ERGO Network and Integro Association combined an online and offline training for the group of 50 peer educators to make the best out of the situation for everyone.

Those who could not travel to Bulgaria had the opportunity to follow an online training course from to 13 August, and those able to travel to Bulgaria had their offline training course in Albena from 10 to 15 August 2020.

Our partner Integro took care of all necessary measures to ensure safety of the participants in the offline training by respecting all protocols when it comes to protection against Covid-19.

During both trainings, the participants could work with and be trained by professionals in the field of addressing hate speech. For example, with Prof. Tomova the participants received information about the impact of stereotypes and prejudices and how media constructs, reinforces and consolidates negative stereotypes and prejudices against Roma. They also worked on content analysis of media products that target Roma.

Throughout the training course, participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and knowledge on the topic, and experts such as lawyers Ms. Mihaylova and Mr. Kashamov introduced the international frameworks that protects against hate speech, as well as shared and made comparison with their national legislation.

The training ended with practical exercises of writing complaints and signal against hate speech, as well as understanding the standards of various social networks for countering hate speech online.

As next step, the peer educators and mentors of the PECAO project will start with their peer education and monitoring activities, which are going to last from October 2020 until September 2021. ERGO Network and its partners will keep you updated on the implementation.

For more information, please follow our Facebook page.

Peer educators combatting antigypsyism online

Peer educators combatting antigypsyism online in time of a pandemic

– A new internet era for Roma youth will begin soon!

Living in the era of web 2.0, soon to be 3.0 sure has its advantages. Everything that we need, want and desire is just a click away (literally)! However, it is as well a vivid example of how technologies with a transformative potential such as the Internet bring with them both opportunities and challenges. Opportunities in terms of exercising freedom of expression, and on the other hand the challenges of defending human dignity online. This being said, we are left with something called Online hate speech.[1]

Having this in mind, ERGO Network and its partners from 10 European countries (Integro Bulgaria, Nevo Parudimos Romania, FAGiC Spain, Romaversitas Hungary, RomanoNet Czech Republic, Roma Active Albania, RROMA North Macedonia, Chiricli Ukraine, Upre Roma Italy, La Voix des Rroms France) are starting to implement the project called PECAO – Peer education to counter antigypsyist hate speech online supported by DG Justice and Google.Org for the next 24 months.

Knowing that hate speech as a manifestation of antigypsyism needs particular attention because of its multiplier effect, where it influences public opinion, fuels tension and paves the way for discrimination and hate crimes, the consortium of the project manages to bring clear objectives to the table:

To reach out to at least 2000 young people in Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Italy, France, North Macedonia and Albania through peer education activities in universities or youth clubs to raise their awareness of the adverse impact of hate speech on Roma and to empower them to recognize and report hate speech online.
To empower 50 young Roma peer educators in 10 countries to monitor hate speech in online media and report cases of hate speech to IT companies, national equality bodies and relevant state institutions to reinforce implementation of anti-discrimination legislation. Their work will lead to national datasets of at least 150 cases, as well as at least 50 reported cases.
To advocate towards national and EU decision-makers for anti-discrimination policies that take into account the online sphere as well as antigypsyism as a bias motivation for hate speech and hate crime.
To use the experiences of peer educators and results of the monitoring to raise awareness of other stakeholders (wider civil society, educational practitioners, young people) of antigypsyist hate speech in online media and the urgency to counteract.

The target group are young Roma peer educators and other young people, as they are primary users of social media and often lack media literacy and critical thinking. Indirectly, the project targets Roma people across Europe who will benefit from reduced hate speech, which impacts negatively on their well-being and their position in society.

Working online enables the partners to be innovative and use peer education to reach a high number of young people, with young Roma themselves being the peer educators. At the same time as educating their peers and raising their awareness of antigypsyist hate speech, they will automatically also act as role models for other young people. The project combines peer education and media monitoring in order to obtain two-fold results: the peer education methodology can achieve a direct change in attitudes and actions of a high number of young people, and the monitoring will contribute to better understanding and a more systemic change of policies through advocacy based on the results.

Having in mind the pandemic COVID-19 that is spreading cross out Europe, the PECAO partners are starting to organize their work online, taking into consideration their well-being and the safety of their community. The main focus this period is utilizing platforms such as ZOOM for online meetings and preparation, setting up the foreseen calls for peer educators and mentors. And for the first time, ERGO will try to host an online Kick-Off meeting and bring in the partners, by having a nice agenda and working plan for a couple of days in April! Updates on how it goes will follow soon!

Meanwhile, many ERGO members are following protocols regarding the pandemic COVID-19, as well as helping the Roma community by sharing information, products they need and by staying organized, safe and well!

[1] Online hate speech is a type of speech that takes place online, generally social media or the internet, with the purpose of attacking a person or a group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender.