LICRA is a French association dedicated to the fight against anti-semitism and other forms of racism. In France, antisemitism and racism are growing problems on social networks.

Why? Because today, online expressions of racism are virtually free from the law and can be shared without a filter. The laws on hate speech are obsolete and ineffective for the digital world, and need to be changed.

LICRA’s combat is to silence voices of hate and racism and pressure the government in order to change the laws and condemn online racism.

Even though times have changed, some things unfortunately still remain the same. Post Racism is an AI that detects and matches expressions of racism from today with hate from the past, to create a conversational campaign. The idea is to raise awareness on the necessity to update laws that will help fight online hate today.

Only 2% of French people consider themselves as racists, yet the number of racist comments and acts online are increasing. Antisemitism alone increased by 74% in 2018.

When people comment online there is a distance and anonymity between them and their target.

The strategy relies on a behavioural bias: Framing.

Framing is a technique that re-frames an event, a question or a fact in a different context to the original in order to generate a response. We wanted to re-frame todays online racist comments in a way that people would realize the gravity of their acts and the extent of the harm they were causing.

Using social listening we realized the extent of hate comments online, which led us to choose social media as the medium with which to be part of the conversation and help spread our message.

The launch of the campaign was thought in different stages:

1- 19th of April: The launch of the A.I.

In the aim to respond to racisms posts and also to feed our campaign before the launch of the PR.

2- 29th of April: The launch of the French & International PR

The purpose was to spread the campaign all over the world to touch the major medias and to highlight the purpose of the campaign : Sign a petition to change the French law and condemn online racism.

3- 29th of April : Print campaign

We diffused our 4 posters in different French Media Press (Libération, Le Monde, Figaro, Le Particulier…) and for an outdoor campaign in France (JCDecaux, ClearChannel)

After the campaign, a new law proposal to fight online hate has been submitted to the National Assembly and is going to be voted.

http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/propositions/pion1785.asp