#iamhere
#iamhere is an international collective counterspeech network that was founded by Mina Dennert, a journalist, in Sweden in 2016. Dennert was alarmed by a surge in hateful comments about foreigners, as more than one million migrants arrived in Europe in 2015, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan. She began responding to xenophobic comments online. She soon wanted help with that enormous and difficult task, and recruited friends and colleagues. As the effort grew into a group, she named it jagärhär, Swedish for “I am here.”
It grew quickly, not only in Sweden but in other countries where many satellite groups were formed, and now more than 150,000 members of #iamhere respond to hatred through 16 national Facebook groups, all named “i am here” in a national language. Members seek out what they regard as hatred in comment threads of news articles posted on Facebook and then respond together, following a strict code of rules written by Dennert, which includes keeping a respectful and non-condescending tone, and not spreading prejudice or rumors.
Members learn where to counterspeak through what they call “actions.” Group members search Facebook for hateful comments on news articles and other public pages and send those to administrators who choose a few to share with the entire group, directing members to post and “like” each other’s comments in the relevant comment thread. Because Facebook ranks comments on public pages based on interactions (“likes” and replies), “liking” each other’s comments pushes them to the top of comment threads.
This is a vital feature of #iamhere’s model: they make use of Facebook’s platform architecture to amplify their own civil, fact-based comments and bury hateful or xenophobic comments at the bottom of comment threads, making it less likely that others will see them.
Members of #iamhere say they try to amplify comments that are logically argued, well-written, and fact-based, whether they are written by #iamhere members or not, because they may be able to reach the larger audience of readers – people who encounter an article and comments while scrolling through their Facebook feeds. Some of those people are part of the “movable middle,” group members posit, since they have not made up their minds yet about the topic being discussed, and therefore could be swayed in different directions by comments. That is an opportunity for #iamhere, as they see it.
In addition to trying to reach those who are undecided on an issue, many members also describe counterspeaking with the goal of helping others see that they are not alone in feeling that hateful speech is wrong. “These comment fields can make the impression that most people are hateful; they’re not,” said one member of #jagärhär, the Swedish branch of the group.
Another member shared a similar view: If you go into a place where a lot of bad things are written, then people say, ‘oh, God! That is what everyone thinks!’ But this is not what everyone thinks. A lot of people think differently; and that’s important.”
Documenting dissent in this way encourages others who have stayed silent to feel more confident about speaking up. Many such people have joined in as counterspeakers, leading #iamhere members to tell the DSP in interviews that they think counterspeech can improve discourse norms even without changing opinions, simply by disinhibiting people who already agree with counterspeakers.
References:
- Buerger, Catherine. "# iamhere: Collective Counterspeech and the Quest to Improve Online Discourse." Social Media + Society 7, no. 4 (2021): 20563051211063843.
- Friess, Dennis, Marc Ziegele, and Dominique Heinbach. "Collective civic moderation for deliberation? Exploring the links between citizens’ organized engagement in comment sections and the deliberative quality of online discussions." Political Communication 38, no. 5 (2021): 624-646.
- Ziegele, Marc, Teresa K. Naab, and Pablo Jost. "Lonely together? Identifying the determinants of collective corrective action against uncivil comments." New Media & Society 22, no. 5 (2020): 731-751.