Counter online hate speech against Balkan youth

Abstract
Today, 24 years after the internet took off in earnest, its everyday reality has become almost indistinguishable from our physical world.
There are meetings, games, traffic jams, writers, bloggers, collectors, pornographers. There is graffiti, well-behaved and not so well-behaved citizens, politicians, matchmakers, traders, banks, shops, cinemas…and an ever-growing army of trolls and haters. During the first 20 years, we have been pretty much driving clear, well maintained roads, and the hate we saw coming was well defined and positional.
Alas, no more. Our modern hybrid digital/physical world, in which the social media rule the day and handhelds (tabs, pads, smartphones) have become the (necessary) vehicles of living, is unsafe in such a way that it now also creates reality based on lies and disinformation.
Although often not realized, navigating the modern Net is a risky task for the current and new generations. The pitfalls are often not or not clearly visible or recognizable and the cesspools, back-alleys and lunatic asylums of old have morphed to become part of an everyday ‘normal’ landscape. Added to this hatescape is an overlay of those who - for political or other reasons – boost hate and fakery.
Hate crime and hate speech can have a severe negative impact on the victim, his or her group and society at large. Definitions of what constitutes a hate crime and hate speech differ according to country and it is acknowledged that there is significant under-reporting of hate crimes, including hate speech. There are also concerns that especially online hate speech, directed towards certain groups (religious, ethnic and sexual minorities) is increasing.
The European Union legislation is contained within the Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law. This Act compels EU Member States to punish intentional conduct: Publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group or individual defined by race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin; Commission of such an act by public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material.
In addition the Act states that for offences other than the above, Member States should take necessary measures to ensure that racist and xenophobic motivation is considered an aggravating circumstance or is taken into account by the courts when they determine the penalties for offences. There exists no equivalent document on homophobic and transphobic speech and activity, but many member states have developed national legislation to deal with such issues.
Hate speech, as described and analysed in, is currently overwhelming the online communities and especially the social networks. Companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube are under increasing scrutiny for the amount of hate speech that thrives on their platforms during the recent years. However, they don’t have a comprehensive response for dealing with hate speech due to the fact that there is a fine line between free and hate speech, and they don’t want to limit freedom of expression on their services. Through time they have issued measures against it, but while the steps were positive, they couldn’t eliminate the problem of hate speech.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and Microsoft have all been involved in the creation of the “code of conduct” to fight illegal hate speech on their platforms within 24 hours. The EU asked that companies be willing to disable or remove content from their platforms and if necessary, to promote “‘counter-narratives’ to hate speech,” Reuters reported. But the European Commission revealed that the companies were not complying with this code in a satisfactory manner.
Hate speech can have a severe negative impact on the victim, his or her group and society at large. Definitions of what constitutes a hate speech differ according to country and it is acknowledged that there is significant under-reporting of hate crimes, including hate speech. There are also concerns that especially online hate speech, directed towards certain groups (religious, ethnic and sexual minorities) is increasing.
The European Union legislation is contained within the Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law. This Act compels EU Member States to punish intentional conduct: Publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group or individual defined by race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin; Commission of such an act by public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material.
In addition the Act states that for offences other than the above, Member States should take necessary measures to ensure that racist and xenophobic motivation is considered an aggravating circumstance or is taken into account by the courts when they determine the penalties for offences. There exists no equivalent document on homophobic and transphobic speech and activity, but many member states have developed national legislation to deal with such issues.

The project ”Counter online hate speech against Balkan youth”, aims at gathering expertise, tools, methodology and knowledge on cyber hate and developing transnational comprehensive practices for identifying, analysing, reporting and counteracting online hate speech among youngsters from Balkans region.
The Project is transnational and focuses on a broad definition of hate crime, which includes gender hostility, and hate offences motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation and disability. Immigration will be addressed as a cross-cutting issue. Other forms of intolerance will be also taken into consideration, if relevant.

Objectives
• To counter online hate speech against young people in Balkans by using a multidimensional approach consisting in monitoring, analysis, training, dissemination and by advocacy and publications.
• To enable a broad coalition of NGOs to take part in systematic monitoring exercises for hateful content online.
• To develop e-learning courses for cyber activists, moderators, tutors and regular citizens aimed to create a respectful online environment.
• To provide young people from Balkan region with useful tools that can help them deal with on-line hate speech or bystanders or even as victims.
• To transfer best practices among Balkan States.
• To set up a reporting infrastructure that will connect concerned young people with police forces and which will enable the reporting of illegal hate-related speech.

The activities of the project will be structured around the following Work Streams:
• WS0: Management. This Work Stream will coordinate the activities of the project and will assure the smooth collaboration of the partners towards the effective completion of the project.
• WS1:Awareness and Dissemination. This Work Stream will spread awareness to all interested stakeholders and will disseminate the excellence of the project.
• WS2: Legal and ethical Framework. This Work Stream will ensure that the project complies with the requirements of the protection of fundamental rights, especially the right to private life, to personal data protection and to freedom of expression. This will imply to legally define the notion of hate speech which will also serve as a basis of the tasks to be performed inthe other Work Streams.
• WS3: Technical Infrastructure. This Work Stream will provide the technical infrastructure needed (i) to monitor the spread and penetration of online haterelated speech using automated tools based on bigdata analysis and (ii) to provide the necessary reporting tools that will connect citizens with the police enabling them to report online hate speech.
• WS4: Reporting Infrastructure and Networking.

The outputs of the project are expected to be:
• A set of automated crawling tools that will identify haterelated speech web sites sites and pages. The possibility to distinguish potentially illegal content from potentially non illegal contents will be investigated.
• One multilingual Web platform (languages of partners)
• A smartphone app thatwill be used to educate people and to help them report illegal online hate speech.
• 4 different types of leaflets
• popularized articles
• A Frequently Asked Questions Manual on “Responding to online Hate Speech against youth”
• A study of the definition of illegal hatred throughout the partner countries, which will enable to clarify the precise kind of contents to be targeted
• A privacy impact assessment of the project to ensure its compliance with privacy and data protection requirements.
• One training sessions for law enforcement authorities and public authorities in each partner country .
• One training sessions in each partner country for youth educators (trainers, youth workers, teachers) to understand what youth believe hate speech to be.
• One international conference.
• One booklet for youth and hate crime.