Susan Benesch, founder of The Dangerous Speech project, tells the story of how worried people in Kenya were in the run-up to their national election in 2013. Dangerous, inflammatory speech around the previous election in 2007 had led to widespread violence involving more than 1,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of people being displaced, she said in a talk at Harvard’s Berkman Center, where she … [Read more...] about Counterspeech: New online safety tool with huge potential
cyberbullying
Real help for kids dealing with cyberbullying
It was an epiphany that turned into a theme for me at the annual conference of the International Bullying Prevention Association this week. It was a theme by the third day, when I heard keynote speaker Carlotta Walls-Laprier say, "I knew who I was." She, one of the Little Rock Nine (the African American students who made history in 1957 as the first to attend then-all-white Central High School in … [Read more...] about Real help for kids dealing with cyberbullying
10 tips for digital citizens’ parents
Actually, parents are digital citizens too. If they spend any time in digital spaces. At least for as long as we residents of this networked world are still putting "digital" in front of "citizenship." I suspect that won't be for very long, but we're here, now, in an interesting, global discourse about what citizenship means now in an increasingly networked world – especially for youth, the people … [Read more...] about 10 tips for digital citizens’ parents
Online harassment, bullying: Wisdom from someone who’s been there
To mark National Bullying Prevention Month, here – in addition to some fresh research on bystanders further down – are some simple but powerful insights from someone who has been and continues to be subjected to severe online harassment and is now helping other victims recover from it.... "I'm a game developer, I'm a systems thinker so I can see patterns in behavior," said Zoe Quinn, who, … [Read more...] about Online harassment, bullying: Wisdom from someone who’s been there
From bystanders to ‘upstanders’ & leaders: How it’s done
This is one way it's done, anyway – the way #iCANHELP does it. And in more than a decade of writing about solutions to anti-social behavior online, I haven't seen one as effective, pro-social and pro-student as #iCANHELP. [Disclosure: I'm working with #iCANHELP to pilot a social media helpline for schools this year, so I'm biased, but this is why I'm working with them – besides the fact that 1) … [Read more...] about From bystanders to ‘upstanders’ & leaders: How it’s done