Making Social Strides Conference Resources and Tips

The following information is a snapshot of key information, tips, tools and resources shared throughout the “Making Social Strides” National Conference in Edmonton and online from March 24-25, 2023. 


Social Stride Resources

By Youth for Youth: Learning About Online Hate & Advocacy - The Things No One Taught Us About: A report capturing the Social Stride network’s learnings as they worked to address online hate and discrimination. It aims to analyze best practices for addressing online hate, discrimination, and mis/disinformation. 

Digital Literacy: Building Pathways: Shares two years of learnings on digital literacy barriers, challenges, and best practices in combating racism, discrimination and mis/disinformation online. It focuses on the role of young people in creating shifts in thought and action.

Bystander Intervention: Tipsheet shares easy to understand methods of bystander intervention in both English and French.

Unsafe Space: The Online World: A video on the creation of Social Stride and the steps they are taking to address online discrimination, mis/disinformation, and barriers to remediation through education and outreach.

Misinformation and Disinformation

Panelists: Zachary Weeks, Krishana Sankar, Caitlin Fowler
Science UP First
Evidence for Democracy

While misinformation and disinformation are damaging and hurtful to people and divisive to our society, the main difference between them is the existence of malicious intent associated with disinformation. 

Tips to address disinformation and misinformation online

  • When someone with disabilities tries to advocate for themselves, it can be interpreted as overstepping, being aggressive, or intent can be misconstrued/be perceived as baseless complaint.

  • Fact-correcting can be really difficult online. Sharing evidence is not always helpful and conversations can spiral. 

  • Effectiveness may be in helping people think critically on their own rather than direct fact checking.

  • Keeping things topic-agnostic (i.e. not taking a particular position on a topic) can help keep things calmer, and can help people focus on thinking critically.

  • Keep up to date with current news and trends. Make sure you know the facts before engaging in conversation on topics that may be susceptible to mis/disinformation. 

  • Kindness and compassion can create a welcoming and engaging online space.

  • You can’t just say what you want to say. There are things that cross the line of freedom of speech. 

Resources

  • Misinformation in Canada. Research and Policy Options: Evidence for Democracy completed a research project to characterize the research landscape in Canada and to provide options for addressing misinformation.

  • How to avoid inspiration porn: Understanding the narratives around disability and a link to Stella Young’s TED Talk which coined the term.

  • The CRAAP test is a list of questions to help you evaluate the information you find and assess whether or not a source is reliable and credible. The test, further  information and resource tools can be found here:

  • Media Smarts: MediaSmarts is a Canadian not-for-profit charitable organization for digital and media literacy. Our vision is that children, youth and trusted adults have the critical thinking skills to engage with media as active and informed digital citizens. Tiny Hippos in the House and Break the Fake Campaign.

  • Digital Public Square: Gamification to teach digital literacy.

  • Snopes: An online fact-checking site to counter misinformation and provide investigative reporting on evidence-based and contextualized analysis of online information.

  • CIVIX (CTRL-F): An excellent example of an outside group coming into schools to incorporate digital literacy as well as provide easy to use classroom tools. Named for the keyboard shortcut for ‘find,’ CTRL-F is an evidence-based program that equips students with the habits and skills needed to evaluate online information to determine what to trust. A rigorous research study carried out with academic partners demonstrated that CTRL-F dramatically improved students’ ability to reject false claims, and identify credible sources.

  • #FactsFirstPH: A first-of-a-kind initiative that aims to debunk dubious claims online, make facts spread faster and farther than hate and lies, flag disinformation narratives and actors, and hold online perpetrators accountable. 

  • EvidenceMattersToMe.ca: Has a campaign to empower citizens to better engage with and understand evidence. On the site you can find guides on How to Understand Evidence and How to Ask for Evidence and much more.

See It, Report It: Use and Efficacy of Reporting Mechanisms

Panelists: Jeje Mohamed, Lana Cuthbertson, Daniel Panneton
Digital Safety & Free Expression - PEN America
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center
Areto Labs

Tips on Online Reporting Mechanisms

  • Social media tends not to be bound by the Government of Canada’s laws, and since online violence and mis/disinformation is a societal issue, social justice must be built into organizations and companies looking to address it.

  • Online abusers do not necessarily need to be engaged with or amplified. The empowerment of targets of online abuse is just as important. 

  • Using in-site reporting tools can be a safer way to address hate/violence online.

  • If you do engage with an abuser, be mindful of your own safety. Are you able to engage? Should you engage? 

  • Become better at fact-finding. Seek to verify and validate information you see online before engaging it.

  • Be aware of some of the limitations of reporting. Sometimes AI are viewing reports, and sometimes human moderators are. Human moderators often have an overwhelming task and do not have the proper tools, support, or subject matter expertise needed to cover all issues of hate/violence online.

  • Advocate for social media companies to improve their moderation and reporting mechanisms. Social media companies have little incentive to improve themselves and need legislation behind solutions to back it up.

  • Keep informed of advancing technologies, like AI, and how it can be used to spread misinformation/disinformation.

Resources

Legislation Update

Panelists: Terence Hamilton, Parveen Parmar
UNICEF Canada
John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights

Notes from the session

  • Canada is severely behind on addressing online hate and needs legislation that reflects today’s society.

  • The Government of Canada is currently working on an Online Harms bill. While they are working on establishing a definition that reflects online hate speech, there is no definitive deadline of when that may be introduced.

  • Bill C27, the Digital Charter and Implementation Act, is working on updating Canada’s privacy legislation for the digital age. It will aim at addressing upcoming technologies and will establish complaint and oversight mechanisms.

Resources

  • Bill C-27: The Digital Charter and Implementation Act that is currently in its second reading.

  • Bill C-36: An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act and to make amendments to another Act (hate propaganda, hate crimes, and hate speech).

What Do You Propose?

Panelists: Areto Labs, Fair Play Alliance
Areto Labs
Fair Play Alliance

Notes from the session

  • The Fair Play Alliance is empowering game developers to foster healthier environments. They envision a world where games fulfill the promise of play free of harm for all players. They have a coalition of 300 gaming companies around the world and are focused on equipping game developers with best practices. 

  • Areto Labs uses AI to track, moderate, and counteract social media accounts that may be targeted with abuse and harassment. Their tools can auto-moderate abusive content and remove it when it is detected.  

Resources


Neximar AlarconSocial Stride, Human Rights, Human Rights Education, Advocacy