Abstract: The EU-Funded RELATION – RESEARCH, KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATION AGAINST ANTISEMITISM project (https://www.relationproject.eu) aims at defining an innovative strategy that starts from a better knowledge of the Jewish history/traditions as part of the common history/traditions, and puts in place a set of educational activities in Belgium, Italy, Romania and Spain as well as online actions in order to tackle the phenomenon.
The project activities include the monitoring of antisemitism phenomenon online in the four countries of the project (Belgium, Italy, Romania and Spain) by creating a cross-country web-monitoring of illegal antisemitic hate speech.
The shadow monitoring exercises aim at:
● Analyzing the removal rate of illegal antisemitic hate speech available on diverse Social Media Platforms signatory to the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online, namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.
● Analyzing the types of content and narratives collected by the research team.
Partners organizations focused on their country language: French for Belgium, Italian, Romanian and Spanish. Four organizations from four different countries (Belgium, Italy, Spain and Romania) took part in the monitoring exercise: Comunitat Jueva Bet Shalom De Catalunya (Bet Shalom, Spain), CEJI - A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe
(Belgium), Fondazione Centro Di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC, Italy), Intercultural Institute Timișoara (IIT, Romania).
The monitoring exercise follows the definition of Illegal hate speech as defined “by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion,
descent or national or ethnic origin.”
The content was collected and reported to social media platforms in three rounds between October 2022 and October 2023. Content was checked for removal after a week or so to give enough time to social media platforms to analyze and remove the content. The monitoring exercises devote particular attention to the intersection of antisemitism and sexism.
