Where: Room LG.09, David Hume Tower, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JX
When: Thursday 22 November 2018, 4:00-6:00pm

To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-anti-muslim-hate-speech-in-italy-and-great-britain-tickets-52021800606

Public discussion has been radically changed by the Internet and social media: erroneous perceptions of reality help the circulation of news that is partially or entirely false, and this is then amplified by being widely shared. A key example is how fake news and inflammatory statements against Muslims contribute to online hate speech that results in the circulation of millions of racist or xenophobic messages. Messages against Muslim communities have increased across Europe, particularly with the rise of far right groups. Muslims are the fourth most targeted group on Twitter and are part of six groups, including Jews, migrants, homosexuals, women and disabled people, to be targeted on social media platforms. In this seminar, a team of researchers will present the preliminary findings from the project ‘Hatemeter’ which addresses these phenomena. This European Commission-funded project is aimed at studying anti-Muslim hate speech online, as well as producing computer-assisted responses and hints to support counter-narratives and awareness raising campaigns.

Hatemeter research team:
Stefano Bonino is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at eCrime, University of Trento. Stefano has conducted research on security-related  and migration-related topics. His  monograph, Muslims in Scotland: The Making of Community in a Post-9/11 World, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2016 and was shortlisted for the 2017 Saltire Society Research Book of the Year Award. Stefano has published extensively on issues related to Muslim communities in Europe and has disseminated his work in academia, in the media and in the policy-making world both in Europe and internationally.
Elisa Martini is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. She mainly deals with crime statistics, methodology of social research and migration studies. She has authored several publications on youth deviance, social integration of second-generation migrants, pharmaceutical counterfeiting, trafficking in human beings, and smuggling of migrants.
Parisa Diba is a Research Associate at Teesside University, based in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law (SSSHL). Parisa is currently undertaking a range of research activities on the European Commission funded project ‘HATEMETER’.

Commentator:
Safia Ali is Race Equality Mainstreaming Officer in CEMVO Scotland (Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organizations, Scotland). CEMVO Scotland is a national intermediary organisation and strategic partner of the Scottish Government Equality Unit. With over 20 years of experience in the voluntary sector, Safia has worked in community development covering issues of health, housing, domestic violence/abuse, youth work, and group work. She has particularly focused on work with disadvantaged groups, single parents, elderly and young people and with BME communities, especially women survivors of domestic violence/abuse. In her current post, she looks at mainstreaming race equality through policies and recruitment in public, private and third sector organisations. In addition, she manages the EM Women’s Network which aims at becoming a strategic voice for EM Women to influence policy and decision making in Scotland.

Moderator:
Giulia Liberatore is a Leverhulme Fellow in Sociology, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies/ Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh working on a project on female Islamic scholarship and guidance in the UK. She has a PhD in Anthropology from the LSE and her recent monograph is entitled Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain (2017, Bloomsbury). She is currently teaching a new course on Muslims in Europe.

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Coffee/tea and cake will be provided at 4pm, with the seminar starting at 4:15pm.

Co-sponsored by Citizens, Nations and Migration (CNaM) Network and the Alwaleed Centre, University of Edinburgh