Online Interreligious Dialogue Community Building to Stand Against Online Hate Speech

When educational and social policies addressed to end with segregation problems are not scientific evidence-based, they may easily increase xenophobia and racism. Previous research (authors) showed that forced redistribution of immigrant students, considered as a load that had to be shared within a Spanish municipality, was strongly associated with a xenophobic vote to an extreme-right party that launched Islamophobic and anti-immigration rants. In those few years of redistribution implementation, this party went from nothing to the second most voted in that municipality. Multiethnic and multireligious societies pose the challenge of both confronting such kinds attacks and achieving social cohesion, now increasingly taking place online.

In this communication, we present results of two European researches on hate speech “Alreco” and “Real Up”, that identified both the online upstander discourse in front of attacks to minority religions and religious practices -such as islamophobia and antisemitism- and elements that foster and strengthen it. These researches were about how to widen the visibility of online upstanders who stands in front of populism, hate speech, disinformation, and fake news, and how they pose alternative narratives.

The analysis found that citizenship provides dozens of online daily actions to stop or counteract hate speech. One essential action is strengthening interreligious dialogue community building so that it can provide, from diversity, upstander responses jointly with scientific evidence, acting as a shield and preventing the normalisation of hate speech and isolating violence. These actions help build an online community that provides victims and bystanders with a proper context to report and the certainty that there will be no retaliation. Another research output stemming from applying Social Media Analytics to upstander discourse is that the most impactful posts (those with more likes and retweets) are not violent, are linked to the language of desire, and are based on evidence.