Living Together Online. Positive Messengers for Tolerance

21-22 June
The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate

"Living Together Online: Positive Messengers for Tolerance" is an international conference to discuss methods to counter online hate speech.

How does hate speech originate, who are the offenders, when does it move from the virtual into the physical world, how can false news cause tension and even violence, what do hate speech victims experience? These are some of the questions we will discuss together with a Rwanda genocide survivor, with the founder of the most massive public campaign for culture without hate in the Czech Republic, as well as with hate speech researchers, journalists and experts from Greece, Great Britain, Italy, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany and Bulgaria.

We will talk about the future together with politicians, human rights experts, gaming industry representatives, local authorities. We will review the instruments that are already used online and offline to effectively limit hate speech. We will map the way ahead together.

The conference is organized by the Sofia Development Association in the framework of the project Coalition of Positive Messengers to Counter Online Hate Speech, which is co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Union.

The conference is part of Sofia Municipality's programme for Bulgaria's presidency of the EU. Among the speakers are Iliana Yotova, vice president of Bulgaria, and Yordanka Fandakova, mayor of Sofia.