Elephant Talk

ended

Maghweb has observed a problematic conundrum over time: while members of their youth communities are highly aware of online gender-based hate speech on a personal level (through first person experiences or those of friends), they lack a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon as a systemic symptom of gender inequality on an EU level, unable to independently relate their personal experiences as young citizens to current data and information in a meaningful way. Keen to understand the EU-wide existence of this conundrum, Maghweb began dialogues with other organisations in Greece, Portugal and Romania who work closely with young people and promote anti-hate speech initiatives and discovered the persistence of young people’s limited, personal understanding of online gender-based hate speech, forming a consortium capable of addressing this common need among young EU citizens at an influential, transnational level. The project proposal that subsequently emerged aims to respond to EU youth citizens’ limited, predominantly personal understanding of online gender-based hate speech and lack of connection to important, potentially activating data on the issue by engaging young citizens across Europe in a collective, international collaborative data gathering and visualisation action for online gender-based hate speech with youth workers from the young people’s local communities. The project has the following objectives: General objective: Strengthen EU young citizens’ collective engagement with gender-based hate speech as a systemic, EU-wide phenomenon Specific Objective 1: Build capacities of youth workers and civic educators and activists working in the third sector in inclusive, bottom-up gender-sensitive data gathering and visualisation Specific Objective 2: Stimulate youth civic participation in information raising and collective social and political dialogue about online gender-based hate speech