Our Facebook support base has hit the 12000 mark!
We want to thank all of our supporters for the enthusiastic engagement you have shown on our page. We appreciate all the likes, shares and comments. You support gives our work impact.
Recently, we have been asked why we are focusing one kind of hate and not another. This question gets asked regardless of which type of hate we are focusing on at that particular point in time. Given the rapid increase in our supporter base in the past few months, perhaps it is time we recap the scope of our past and present work.
OHPI is an Australian charity focused on reducing the harm from online hate speech such as racism, religious vilification, online misogyny, homophobia, serious trolling, cyberbullying and more. Below we discuss some of the work we have done.
Antisemitism: OHPI has published many briefings and reports on rising online antisemitism warning against its spill over into the real world. You can view all our publications on the subject here. Our most recent briefings focus on Modern Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial on Social Media.
We are currently conducting a campaign “Spotlight on Antisemitism” to collect online antisemitic content for a report that will be presented at a major international conference on Antisemitism later in the year. This is also why many of our Facebook posts in March are focused on antisemitism.
Online Anti-Muslim Hate: OHPI has published an extensive report on anti-Muslim hate on Facebook looking at over 349 images across 50 anti-Muslim Facebook hate pages. The report is supported by a range of individuals and organizations including the Islamic Council of Victoria. We also published a report calling for responsible free speech in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo killings in January 2015.
We have also published several briefings looking at specific anti-Muslim hate pages and building campaigns to get them removed from Facebook. You can see a complete list of our publications on the subject here.
Hate against Indigenous Australians: OHPI has been at the forefront of campaigns to get Aboriginal Memes pages removed from Facebook. Facebook has taken heed and permanently deleted some of these racist pages reported by us. Here’s a list of all our publications on the subject.
Online Misogyny: On March 8, International Women’s Day, we published a briefing by the Australian feminist campaigner Caitlin Roper in which she shared her experiences of being targeted in a hate campaign on Twitter. You can also view our other publications on the subject here.
We have also written on online racism, cyberbullying, homophobia, serious trolling, hate against Anzacs and military veterans, griefing and Social Media policies.
Online tools: We have also built an online hate reporting tool fightagainsthate.com which was launched publicly by the Hon Paul Fletcher MP in December last year. The tool allows anyone to register and report online hate content on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The hate is categorised according to type, and the collected data is analysed for trends, which we share with related government agencies, academics and NGOs within the field. We hope that such data allows us to move beyond anecdotal campaigns towards a more evidence-based approach to combating online hate. We are using fightagainsthate.com to collect data for our current campaign “Spotlight on Antisemitism”.
We’re tackling a serious and growing problem in society. With your help, we can grow our impact and make an even greater difference in society. There’s two ways to help, the first is by sharing this article, you can use our social media share buttons to do this:
The other way to support our work is to make a donation. We are a small charity, and we rely on public support to continue to do our work. All donations are greatly appeciated, and donations in Australia over $2 are tax deductible.