Block Hate

A woman with her hand in front of her blocking her face. Grey-scaled. Photo by Mattia Ascenzo on Unsplash.

Block Hate: Building Resilience against Online Hate Speech is a four-year research and knowledge mobilization project funded by Public Safety Canada’s Community Resilience Fund. It will work with a variety of sectors to co-create concrete solutions for online hate speech and hate crime in communities across Canada.

The overall objective of this project is to improve community resilience by developing technological intervention tools to prevent, address and report online hate speech through community-based research.

It will strengthen civil society responses at the national and local levels through engagement with the information, communication, and technology sector as well as local communities in creating and sharing counter-narratives against Anti-Black racism, Anti-Indigenous racism, Islamophobia and xenophobic or racist discourses. The project will target youth aged 14 to 30 in communities across Canada with a focus on youth experiencing marginalization including young women and non-binary youth, Black, Indigenous and youth of colour, LGBTQ2S+ youth, religious minorities, and youth with disabilities.

The project is comprised of four components: research and knowledge mobilization, creating partnerships with a coalition of stakeholders, building tools to combat hate speech in Canada, and capacity building for community actors.

Disrupt & Dismantle! Leadership Fellowship

YWCA Canada Releases 2022 #BlockHate Research Report and Polling Data

YWCA Canada has authored a new report about online hate in Canada, which centers on the voices, lived experiences, and strategies shared by young women and gender-diverse youth aged 16-30 years.

Read the report here: #BlockHate: Centering Survivors and Taking Action on Gendered Online Hate in Canada – National Report

Read the results of the polling data here: Gender & Online Hate in Canada: A national survey of online hate speech as experienced by women and gender-diverse people aged 16-30.

Block Hate Campaign with CRRF

On March 21, 2020, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, we launched #BlockHate, a national social media campaign with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) to address concerns around the rise of hate speech and racism online. The campaign features women of colour targeted by online hate through social media who share their experiences.