Online Hate and Canadian Law
Traditional government responses to online hate have been to police cyberspace as an extension of the state’s territory, ignoring the online/offline divide.
Traditional government responses to online hate have been to police cyberspace as an extension of the state’s territory, ignoring the online/offline divide.
Since its earliest days, the internet has been hailed as a uniquely open marketplace of ideas and it’s become an essential means for people to access information and services. The downside of this is that, alongside its many valuable resources, the internet also offers a host of offensive materials – including hateful content – that attempt to inflame public opinion against certain groups and to turn people against one another.
The internet has become a prime means of communication worldwide and this unprecedented global reach – combined with the difficulty in tracking communications – makes it an ideal tool for extremists to repackage old hatred, raise funds and recruit members. As the internet has grown and changed, hate groups and movements have adapted, creating websites, forums and social network profiles, becoming active in spaces such as online games and even creating parallel versions of services such as Twitter, YouTube and GoFundMe.
There are two main strategies for addressing online hate and cultures of hatred in the classroom: teaching youth to recognize and deconstruct it, and empowering them to intervene by answering back to it.
This lesson begins by helping students to identify and understand the different aspects of news outlets. Using these skills, students will then collect and identify news stories and categorize them according to subject matter.
Online hate can have an impact in three interconnected ways:
This lesson package is designed to be modular, allowing teachers to choose activities that are most relevant to their students. The lesson includes: an opening “minds on” activity that introduces essential concepts of election-related misinformation, helps students retrieve prior knowledge, and shows the relevance of the topic; several activities which teachers can choose from based on the needs and context of their classes; a closing activity that introduces students to different strategies for verifying election-related information, including the idea of turning to a best single source (in this case, Elections BC). They then learn and practice engaging in active citizenship by responding to election-related disinformation.
On the internet, it can be hard to tell what’s true and what’s false—but we have to make a lot of decisions based on how reliable we think things are. In Reality Check, you’ll learn how to find clues like finding where a story originally came from and comparing it to other sources, as well as how to use tools like fact-checking sites and reverse image searches.
Submitted by the Prime Minister’s Awards team
The Prime Minister’s Awards (PMA) for Teaching Excellence has just released their latest Exemplary Practices publication highlighting the innovative ideas and proven best practices of the 2014 national level winners.
February 11 is Safer Internet Day, an annual international event organized by InSafe to help promote safer and more responsible use of online technologies, especially by young people.