Point

It is a project on cyber hate against Roma people. The project was implemented by CADDRU in partnership with La Voix des Rroms from France and financed by the Council of Europe through the European Youth Foundation.

The goal of the project is to raise awareness of this phenomenon and to develop the abilities of 16 young people to fight hate speech online actively.

The motivation for choosing this subject was that the Romanian online space is filled with racial comments, because it is easy to hide your identity on the internet.

The project had two main activities:

First, a training on combating online hate speech against Roma took place in Bucharest on 25–27 February 2013. Its aim was to make the bloggers involved in the project feel responsible for moderating their texts and comments, and to help commenters understand the importance of their opinions and the need to keep them objective.

Second, an online flash mob, “Want online respect? Respect others!”, took place on 15 March 2013. It was promoted a month earlier on all social media, and at the specified moment all online users could post a personal statement against hate speech online.