Abstract
Hate has been a growing concern with hate-groups and individuals using the Internet, or more specifically, social media platforms, to globalize hate. Since these social media platforms can connect users around the world, hate-organizations are using these connections as opportunities to recruit candidates and spread their propaganda. Without opposing views, these extreme viewpoints can establish themselves as legitimate and then be used to incite hate in individuals. Thus, these extreme viewpoints must be countered by similar messages to discourage this online hate, and one such way is to use the same platforms through grassroots movements. This paper presents a case study which was conducted on a class of Criminology students who implemented a grassroots community-based campaign called Unity Starts with U (USwithU) to counter-hate in a community by using social media platforms to spread messages of inclusion and share experiences. The results from the campaign showed improvements on people’s attitude towards hate at the local community level. Based on literature and this campaign, policy recommendations are suggested for policymakers to consider when creating or making improvements on counter-narrative programs.
Highlights
People use the Internet, and social media platforms, as common communication tools
Through the outcomes of Unity Starts with U, policy recommendations are discussed in order to provide insight for policymakers to create or improve their own local grassroots movement to counter-hate
The Unity Starts with U campaign Sponsor EdVenture Partners’ Peer to Peer: Facebook Global Digital Challenge (P2P) is a global competition that challenges university students around the world to create a social media campaign to counter-hate and/or extremism (EdVenture Partners, 2017; Moffett & Sgro, 2016)
Summary
People use the Internet, and social media platforms, as common communication tools. Through the campaign’s impact, the grassroots movement over the past 20 years has influenced other communities nationally and internationally to form their own Not in Our Town groups addressing the hate concerns in their neighbourhood (Not in Our Town, 2018). Another similar anti-hate grassroots campaign is the Pink Shirt Day (2018), a movement that started in Nova Scotia in 2007 by two local boys wearing a pink shirt to stand up against bullying. People around the world support the movement by wearing a pink shirt and using their social media accounts with hashtags such as #EndBullying, all with the goal of raising awareness on cyberbullying (Pink Shirt Day, 2018)
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