WCC NEWS: Youth “meet and greet” yields ideas to tackle digital injustice

At a “meet and greet” held in conjunction with an international symposium on digital justice, young people candidly shared what digital injustice means to them. Allowed to speak freely, their list began to reflect the grave consequences of digital injustice on the global young generation. "Meet and greet" gathering for young people during the symposium on social justice in a digital age was moderated by Ukrainian journalist and radio host Katya Potapenko. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC 20 September 2021 Exclusion. Fake news. Hate speech.  At a “meet and greet” held in conjunction with an international symposium on digital justice, young people candidly shared what digital injustice means to them. Allowed to speak freely, their list began to reflect the grave consequences of digital injustice on the global young generation.  Manipulation. Deprivation.  Discrimination.  Something—in fact, many things, they agreed, have to be done—now. With a sense of both urgency and hope, they turned their discussion to solutions: how to tackle hate speech, squelch fake news, and create a digital world with equitable access for all.  One major challenge relate to hate speech, they found, is that artificial intelligence programmed to locate hate speech often ends up targeting the wrong users due to a lack of understanding of the context.  “In a lot of cases, the marginalised group gets it worse than those actually doing the hate speech!” said one young person. The youth agreed that supporting the person who is a target of hate speech is the priority. They also suggested petitioning companies to improve their hate speech policies.  Young people are also very concerned about what seems to be the growing power of fake news, and expressed deep concern that fake news has become a way for powerful people to avoid accountability. “People will follow insane ideas!" said another participant. “Some leaders promote information that many times is untrue but because of their position of power many believe and act upon this information.” Furthermore, many people—especially in poor countries—may not have access to information firsthand and so rely on secondhand information which they cannot fact check and have no choice but to accept as the truth. In addition, the young people called for education on how to use fact-checking sites.  “Individuals who have no access to digital devices to check the credibility of the news they hear from perhaps a person within their community who has access to the digital platforms experience digital injustice,” reflected a young speaker.  Digital literacy and digital access would go a long way toward creating a more just digital world, suggested the young people.  “Populist leaders and big tech companies take advantage of the limited access of people to news sources and platforms, which is why many people  fall into the trap of believing fake news— because that is the only thing available to them,” said a participant.  “The outcome of the ‘meet and greet’ session as well as of the symposium overall proves globality and growing concern by the issue—whatever country you are from, no matter if you have you been a victim of digital injustice or not—common problems caused by it are visible to everyone as it had never been before. To identify these problems, to articulate them publicly – is a first step towards confronting inhumane digitalization,” commented Ukrainian journalist and radio host Katya Potapenko, who moderated the meeting.  International symposium "Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age" Watch the video recordings of the symposium sessions Photo gallery from the symposium Draft manifesto of the symposium "Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age" See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland