OHPI starts 2016 with a campaign to promote positive Australian values on Australia Day.

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Let's unite this Australia Day...

Promoting multiculturalism and pluralism as our true national values

Dear Supporter,

On Australia Day (January 26th) we are running a day-long campaign to promote positive Australian values such as multiculturalism, religious pluralism, mateship, diversity and more while rejecting and reporting hate speech that aims to divide us. There's many perspectives to Australia Day and we hope to share some of them with you, from the Indigneous perspective seeing the date as problematic, to the view of immigrants who become Australian on this day. Whatever your view, join us in celebrating our shared commitment to positive values and our position to hate in our Australia Day campaign.

So far this month we've also made a significant impact getting two misogynistic and abusive accounts (one on Facebook & another on Twitter) terminated. We've called on people to report items that promoted antisemitism, anti-Muslim hate, hate against Indigenous Australians and homophobia - these actions continue, please take part!

We've also welcomed Marc Knobel to our International Advisory Board this month. Mr Knobel is the President of J’accuse, a French association fighting against racism and anti-Semitism on the Internet, and has extensive experience in combating online extremism.

Thank you for your continued support, I wish you all the best for Australia Day and hope you'll join us in taking both positive values campaign and the message of action in reporting hate viral on Tuesday.

Dr Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute

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Unity in Diversity on Australia Day

On January 26, OHPI will be running a day-long campaign “Unity in Diversity on Australia Day”. The campaign will feature images the public can share on social media with the promotion of Australian values such multiculturalism, religious pluralism, respecting people’s dignity, mateship, volunteering, and commitment to the rule of law. It will also encourage the public to take positive by reporting any hate speech seen on the day.

The far right groups will be using Australia Day to promote bigotry, hate and fear of minorities. Our campaign will give people a counter narrative to share: Australian values that embrace people rather than reject them. We want to re appropriate the National flag and other emblems as symbols of unity and multiculturalism.

We can participate in our campaign by:

Join us on Facebook and Twitter and in sharing the images of Australian values (get them here) that embrace us all.
Report hate speech against minorities on social media to FightAgainstHate.com.
Donating to our modest crowd-funding appeal for $1000 to meet our campaign promotional costs.

Our campaign will also include the unique Indigenous Australian view, which looks upon January 26th as “Invasion Day” and the Australian flag as a continued symbol of British colonisation. Read more on how we want to include this and other perspectives in our campaign.

Other stories

Tackling Violent Extremism
We’ve discussed how violent extremism is on the rise in Australia and how online incitement needs more attention. We consider how trusting social media companies on national security can pose real challenges. We look at how Daesh (ISIS) lies about Islam on Social Media. And we analyse Shurat Hadin’s Facebook experiment .

Combating Antisemitism
We denounced the upcoming Holocaust Denial Cartoon Competition in Iran, and asked people to report the “EVOLVEFEST 2016” Facebook Event Page and the YouTube video “History of Multiculturalism” as antisemitic.

Tackling Anti-Muslim Hate
We asked people to report the anti-Muslim video “WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT (islam)” on YouTube.

Tackling Misogyny & Cyberbullying
We looked at Revenge Porn and what the law must do to curb it. We also asked people to report Misogynistic users on Twitter and on Facebook. Both hateful accounts were suspended by the platforms. We also highlighted the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner’s six-month report.

Fighting Antisemitic YouTube video
We campaigned for people to report the antisemitic and racist YouTube video to the platform. The video is still online. Please report it.

Anti-Indigenous Hate
We discussed the Survivor Island 3 video game launch and its removal after public outcry. We also encouraged people to report hate against Indigenous Australians on Twitter.

Homophobia
We asked people to report “EVOLVEFEST 2016” Event Page for gross homophobia.

Social Media Policy
We looked at Facebook’s newly launched campaign against hate speech in Europe and how our reporting tools make a difference. We highlighted research that confirmed confirmation bias on social media and talked about how we can find a balance between free speech and the right to human dignity on the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Media mentions

The Jewish Press interviewed OHPI for a story on the Shurat Hadin experiment.
OHPI was extensively interviewed by J-Wire on the Shurat Hadin experiment.

How you can get involved

There are many ways you can get involved in the fight against online hate.

Register for FightAgainstHate.com with a click, then report item of hate from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Make a donation to support our work. Australian donations are tax deductable.
Join us on Facebook and Twitter and help share our work further