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Don't be silent
Campaign Description:
With more than one million newcomers, Germany has welcomed more refugees than any other country in the EU. This is especially visible in Berlin. As the number of refugees increases in parallel the participation of right-wing political parties in the Bundestag follows. Today hate speech against refugees has exploded on social media. We found out that many people do not take part in countering hate speech on Facebook because they feel powerless and uncommitted. With a strong call to action, Don’t Be Silent focuses on involving and empowering the silent majority, who are likely to intervene but in the end, assume that someone else will do it.
Built upon a strong unifying identity, our campaign spotlights the gratitude and social recognition that enables the silent majority to feel value for acting now. Ultimately, we motivate them to take part in counterspeech by reinforcing positive norms. We have designed an online-offline tactic that has enabled us to continuously gain a strong online presence full of impactful content. We later strategically spread this across our campaign platforms. Since we have entered this competition in the middle of October, we have developed a multi-formatted content strategy and in parallel quickly formed strong partnerships. These partnerships have helped us leverage our impact on both digital and printed media. We have set a strong base that enables the Don’t Be Silent campaign to involve more cities in Europe, as the refugee crisis affects them in a similar way to Berlin.
Partners
Online Civil Courage Initiative - Amadeu Antonio Stifung- Debate Dehate - Das Nettz - Salam #Dare To Be Grey - Design Akademie Berlin.
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See the journey of Don't be silent
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Challenge
How might we show the silent majority what hate speech is and what counter-speech can do to fight hate?
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Target Audience
Don't Be Silent targets the silent majority, specifically the younger population in Berlin between 18 and 30 years old. As the name indicates the silent majority doesn’t take any action against the increasing hate speech on social media, they remain silent. The silent majority has not taken any action based on two factors. Reason one, they are not politically active and even if they would like to help, the content they see doesn’t relate to them with any form of hate speech (a phenomenon that has been found in qualitative research). The second reason is that when they are actually confronted with any hateful comments, they decide not to take any action because they feel that whatever they do to counter these comments won’t be enough to end the overall problem.
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Campaign Goals
1. Call to action: As Albert Einstein, who once was a war refugee said: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it” We want the silent majority to realize that it is important to do something against online hate speech right away.
2. Involvement: Since the silent majority aren’t often in the middle of hate speech, we want them to feel committed to step in and counter the hate online.
3. Empowerment: Because the silent majority feel whatever they do to solve the problem is not enough to end it, we want to convince them that even a small contribution can have a big impact on countering hate speech.
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Research
Through desk research, interviews, surveys and immersion, we gained three key insights that truly raised our awareness on how important it was to address the refugee topic locally:
1. We discovered that hate speech against refugees in Berlin in most cases, is combined with social discrimination, racism and anti-Semitic prejudices.
2. We found out that right-wing extremists and populists have strategically fomented the hatred of refugees within social media.
3. Sometimes, hate speech against refugees translates into real violence with people actually attacking refugee shelters.
Additionally, throughout the research phase we gained key knowledge on the target audiences’ behavior, social media habits, preferred platforms and content delivery. This drove our ideation process and ultimately helped us to develop a relevant and well structured content strategy which allowed our campaign to reach a higher engagement on social media and offline. Lastly with our research we were able to create a successful video series ‘Face the Truth’ where we discussed the effects of hate speech with local Syrian refugees.
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Participation Strategy
Social Media: We designed visually engaging posts for Facebook and Instagram, such as daily counter speech tips and insightful ‘memes’ that our audience could easily connect with. We highlighted positive norms and created a sense of urgency throughout our campaign with the combination hash-tags #dontbesilent and #actnow. We also created a videos series titled ‘Face the Truth’ where we presented talented Syrian refugees showing how their life stories strongly invalidate sexist and anti-Semitic prejudices, which are relatively obvious features of hate speech.
In Person: Our Hate-wall social experiment aimed to bring online hate speech offline. We tested how students (from our university and also other universities) react when they see a hate comment against refugees posted on a physical wall of their university. Like and Dislike stickers were provided to approve or disapprove the hate comment. Nearly 100% of participants disapproved it and wrote down counter-speech with markers. We also created a guerilla activity in which we encouraged the silent majority to spread our main visual symbol, the Don’t Be Silent tape around the city. Offline activities strategically supported our online content.
Partnerships: We partnered with Amadeus Antonio Foundation, Germany’s foremost organisation working to eliminate bigotry and hate speech. They not only helped us promote our content on their social networks but also gave us valuable insights for our content strategy. We also partnered with Salam, one of the main organisations that focus on helping and promoting the integration of refugees in Berlin. They helped us find and contact refugees that were willing to work with us on our ‘Face the Truth’ video series. Our team members also attended extracurricular events such as jam sessions and cultural meetings to find people interested in helping with our content. This was essential to the creation of the video series intro song that was scored custom for us by two local refugees.
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Strengths
Visual Design: The cohesiveness through both our online and offline efforts was essential to create an engaging overall picture of our campaign. Our approach with colors, typography, messages and creative direction on our video production and content creation was very relevant in involving the silent majority.
Research/Partnerships: During the campaign, the team met with 5 talented refugees and two organizations. This helped enhance our campaign by providing valuable insights through interviews and sharing our content online.
Emotional impact: Proof of this is not only the fact that the silent majority got involved, but also the fact, that 5 talented refugees were willing to support us by telling their moving stories in front of the camera, for the public.
PR actions: With our press kit release, the team generated tremendous campaign awareness by reaching over 175.050.000 people. We secured press coverage with media houses Berliner Zeitung and international news broadcaster Deutsche Welle. These opportunities featured the campaign’s initiative with interviews on our team members about the strategy, achievements and vision in place for the campaign.
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Measures of
Effectiveness
Pre and Post-Campaign Surveys: Out of 153 respondents in our post-campaign survey, 82.4% now state they now know how to counter hate speech online. In our pre-campaign survey, only 55.4% of respondents had positive opinions about refugees but after the campaign, 84.6% of respondents expressed positive opinions.
Social Media Metrics: Facebook accumulated an official reach of over 28,690 with engagement with over 4,980 users. Our videos in total have been seen over 5,085 times. Last week we had an increase of 46% more page views with 14% more subscribers. Organizations like The Amadeu Antonio Stiftung (22,785 followers) promoted and shared our video as well as the Design Akademie of Berlin (6,055 followers). News and TV channel Deutsche Welle created an article about us and shared it on Facebook (403,487 followers). At the end of the campaign, we successfully reached our target audience with 46% of our audience being 25-34 and 37% being 18-24. Our Instagram contained 43 posts and had a total impression of over 7,579 views. Our stop animation video gained more than 1,650 impressions with an engagement of over 605.
Local Press Hits: We had an exclusive interview with the Berliner Zeitung Newspaper that has a massive following of 400,000 readers per week. Another major success was Deutsche Welle TV News producing a 3-minute segment about Don’t Be Silent on their evening news program the first week of December. They have 157 million viewers per week world wide throughout radio, television and online.
Offline: Our initial social experiment involved 30 students within the Design Akademie of Berlin. The success of implementation at the SRH Hochschule can be confirmed with 70 motivated students who used counterspeech by disapproving hate comments with ‘dislike’ (downward thumbs) stickers. Our ‘HateWall’ experiment had over a 100% increase in engagement from one university to another.
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Opportunities to Scale
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Just recently a political incident happened where a local mayor was stabbed by an anti-immigratory supporter. The mayor was a keen advocate supporting refugees in Germany. The incident got wide spread attention from various local leaders. Even the German justice minister and Angela Merkel have been tweeting comments about the incident. There is indeed a calling for social awareness of the problem at hand.
We believe we can scale the ‘Don’t Be Silent’ campaign by:
- Involving more cities in Europe, as the refugee crisis affects them in a similar way to Berlin
- Informative sessions with refugees in institutes as a social education initiative
- Creating refugee social integration programs that interact and integrate with the locals
- Creating educational online awareness through a hash-tag that names and shames hate comments #justanotherhater
- Scale the digital social experiment on digital touchscreens in public space, in co-operation with
WallDecaux, one of the biggest outdoor advertisers in Germany, located in Berlin, who we have contacts with.