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For anyone trying to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic, accessing reliable information online has become a minefield of mis- and disinformation, myths, and conspiracy theories.

Responding to the alarming trends that have emerged online, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned of an “infodemic,” which they define as “an overabundance of information, some accurate and some not, that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.”

Much of the COVID-19-related disinformation and conspiracy theories being propagated online rely on anti-Chinese and other racist narratives. A recent report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found that existing extreme right-wing channels have used COVID-19 as a “powerful propaganda tool” to further radicalize their followers on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

One way to push back against disinformation, according to the ISD, “is to flood the information space with evidence-based accurate information in digestible formats.”

Diligent reporting and fact-checking is essential to curbing mis- and disinformation. That’s why the Institute for Canadian Citizenship has teamed up with The Walrus Fact-Checking project to debunk claims related to COVID-19. Below are two widespread claims that our fact-checkers found to be lacking in evidence and rooted in xenophobia.

FACT CHECK: Was COVID-19 intentionally created in a Chinese lab?

One of the most popular myths — recently repeated by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump — is that the virus that causes COVID-19 was intentionally created in a Wuhan lab. The Walrus Fact-Checking project investigated the claim and found no evidence to support it:

“A team of researchers analyzed the genome sequence of the virus and wrote in Nature Medicine that, based on their findings, ‘SARS-CoV-2 [the novel coronavirus] is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.’

According to the study, the genomes of the virus show evidence of natural selection, which means that it has evolved in ways that are unexpected and entirely different from viruses available to laboratories.”

There are other theories about the origin of the virus as well — namely, that the virus was leaked accidentally from a lab, or that it originated in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. But scientists still can’t say with confidence where the original animal to human transmission occurred.

Though there is some evidence that links several cases of the novel coronavirus to the market location, other data suggest that the earliest cases of the virus had no known link to the market. Unfortunately, rather than relying on the available facts, much of the discussion regarding the origin of the virus has been used to fuel discrimination. Some social media users have taken the “wet market” origin theory and used it to promote damaging prejudice against Chinese food and culture.

“The outbreak has had a decidedly dehumanizing effect,” writes Jenny Zhang for the food website Eater, “reigniting old strains of racism and xenophobia that frame Chinese people as uncivilized, barbaric ‘others.’”

FACT CHECK: Would travel bans against China have prevented the spread of COVID-19 in Canada?

Since the outbreak of the virus, countless anti-Chinese attacks have been recorded worldwide: a family in Perth, Australia had their driveway vandalized with the words “virus get out”; the French newspaper Courrier picard ran an article with the headline “Alerte jaune” (“Yellow alert”); and in Vancouver, an elderly Asian man was shoved to the ground outside a convenience store while his attacker yelled racial slurs and referenced COVID-19.

These individual acts of racism have also been echoed in calls for policy measures that target Chinese travellers. Another Walrus Fact-Checking article examined the claim that an earlier travel ban against China would have protected Canada from COVID-19, and found there was little evidence to support it:

“Not only do targeted bans discriminate against travellers based on their national origin, research on HIV/AIDS, Ebola, influenza, and H1N1 has found that placing travel restrictions on a specific country are not generally effective…Think Global Health compared the number of cases in countries that had implemented travel bans on China with those that had not, and found that travel bans don’t appear to be affecting the spread of the virus.”

Jumping to xenophobic conclusions without ever examining their factual basis is a feature of the “infodemic,” and something that policy makers, the media, and the public must join together to combat.

As Scott Radnitz writes in the Guardian, although the infodemic and the pandemic are running parallel to each other, there are some clear differences between them. Spreading false information has been made far easier than spreading a virus, with tools like social media making it possible to transmit ideas without ever being in physical contact with others. And unlike people who have contracted COVID-19, those who spread misinformation are not always ”passive conduits” — some, like extremists and hate groups, do so with the intention of sowing fear, panic, and hatred. But transmitting myths and misinformation can be stopped, and, with the right information spread widely enough, can sometimes even be reversed.

By Sejla Rizvic

As we were unable to gather in person for 6 Degrees Montréal due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we invited two Montreal leaders to have an online discussion around community, activism, and community leadership.

Caro Loutfi is the executive director of Apathy is Boring, and Fabrice Vil is the co-founder and president of Pour 3 Points.

6 Degrees: How has the current context of COVID-19 changed your work? More specifically, how has it changed the impact of your work?

Caro Loutfi: As far as our programs go, our participants are currently meeting using screens, just like the three of us are doing right now. We think it’s important to continue to offer opportunities for young people to get together and find community in these isolating times. Having a community of peers to interact, learn and engage with, and with which they can keep their projects going is really valuable.

Fabrice Vil: Pour 3 Points is an organization that trains sports coaches to do outreach work with the young people they’re already interacting with. These training programs usually take place in physical settings like group retreats where everyone gets together. The sense of community we’ve built is still present in this remote context, but now our gatherings take place online.

Caro, you mentioned the word community, and that really speaks to me, because it’s been fundamental to how I first experienced this lockdown. What are some of the thoughts you’ve had regarding community leadership and notions of equality and social justice?

CL: Our mission at Apathy is Boring is to get young people involved so they can be engaged as active citizens in their communities and in our democracy. In times like these, civic engagement and collective engagement are really important. Our mission and our main objectives are directly connected to the issues currently affecting local and global communities.

This isolation and the fact that many of these young people who are working and active in their communities now have to do so virtually is a big issue. Some of them simply don’t have access to the internet, so that’s an issue we’re very aware of right now. What role should governments and businesses play when they have the power to decide who gets access? It’s about money and it’s about support. I believe internet service providers hold a lot of responsibility right now.

There are two issues we’re particularly focused on. Firstly, the issue of connectivity and how one can be engaged as a citizen without access, without that privilege. Secondly, what are we doing to support people who are dealing with mental-health issues? On the one hand, it’s important to respect social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but on the other hand, we are paying a price when it comes to mental health in various communities, especially with young people from marginalized communities.

FV: Those questions also speak to me. The issue of connectivity has been one of the major challenges our coaches face. Particularly for this one coach in Laval who told me, “Fabrice, I wonder whether I should just call Bell myself and figure out a deal with them so kids in the neighbourhood can have internet access.” That stayed with me because it’s also an issue for adults. For example, the easiest way to access emergency benefits right now is online. So, if you don’t have an internet connection and you’re unable to work, you can’t even access the financial resources you need to cover basic necessities.

Another factor that speaks to me is this issue of vulnerability. In the last few days, we’ve seen more and more data showing that Montréal-Nord is one of the hot spots for the virus; the propagation rate there is the highest in the city. Previously, it was Côte-des-Neiges, and now it’s Montréal-Nord, which also happens to be one of the poorest boroughs in the country. To me, this demonstrates just how many factors are at play here.

When the pandemic first started, people in the Black community were saying that the coronavirus was only affecting white and Asian people, not Black people. This disinformation was being spread within the community. So, I was part of this campaign where we were telling people, “Look, Idris Elba and Kevin Durant both got sick, Manu Dibango died…” Following this, Black communities mobilized and said, “Stay home! We’re affected, too!” And in the U.S., we’re seeing a disproportionate number of Black people dying because of this virus. But in Quebec, and I think in the rest of Canada, we don’t have access to data based on skin colour, so we just don’t have that information.

And then there are essential workers, who are often racialized people. People we don’t see. For example, hospital orderlies, delivery people, and many others. From an inclusion perspective, I believe this is a crucial factor – you can’t just talk about the population as a whole.

CL: It’s unbelievable that we don’t have racial demographic data telling us how COVID-19 impacts our communities, because the impact is obviously going to be different according to the context of each community. The government can’t offer services that meet the needs of specific communities without that data.

If we put enough pressure on the government, maybe they would start collecting that data.

FV: I just want to follow up on this idea of putting pressure on various levels of government, because in the current context I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of power and how individuals on the ground have this power that often remains unknown or invisible. This might be a strange parallel to draw, but we’ve now seen a virus enacting this! It’s this purely biological thing, but similarly in society there are conventional structures in place, and some of them have been weakened.

No one is really talking about our youth as being part of the solution right now. What do they have to say? They’re not necessarily being heard, but there is a latent power there. This pandemic has shown us that the people in suits to whom we’ve granted a certain legitimacy are only legitimate to a point, they’re not all-knowing. It would be cool to start honouring all forms of power throughout our social structures.

CL: Yes, that’s actually our vision at Apathy is Boring: for young people to find their power and to act on it. This doesn’t necessarily mean acting on that power in a formal way, like taking part in the election process. It can also mean community involvement, or involvement in terms of information sharing or community support.

I absolutely agree that this invisible power exists. We do a lot of research here, and we’ll be working on a report over the summer that will look at how young people across the country are reacting to the pandemic and how it will influence the ways in which they get involved in their communities, and how it will change their mentality. New ways of doing things and new issues will emerge. There already are concerns around the power our governments hold. There are historical examples of moments like this where governments have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they don’t wield the same power over citizens in the aftermath of a situation like the one we’re in.

So, it will be interesting to see how young people will perceive the government and our institutions and leaders. And also, how it will change relationships between citizens. Between young people and decision-makers, like people in positions of power.

FV: I look forward to reading that report. It’s being released next fall?

CL: Probably. We’ll be collecting data over the summer. The report isn’t specifically focused on the pandemic, but it will be looking at how young people are getting involved in their communities. Are they engaged or not? How? What drives them? What are their interests? But given the current situation, we will be including a section on how the pandemic has changed the way they do or envision things.

6 Degrees: What is a call to action you might have for the government, individuals, or leaders on how to be active citizens in this current context?

CL: Following our conversation I would have three suggestions. I think the government and service providers should work towards offering free internet access. I think it would be really interesting if this could happen, especially for people who don’t have access right now during the pandemic.

Secondly, I think we’re in need of a better approach to mental health across all provinces. Each province is different, but there are definitely holes in our system as far as services go. We need to be offering free services to young people who, once again, really need these resources.

And finally, I’ll repeat what Fabrice said regarding this power we don’t necessarily see. I really appreciated the virus analogy. It’s this invisible power that has completely changed the way we do things. I believe we should be talking a little more about the power young Canadians have to mobilize, to change how we do things. They might perceive this power as being invisible, but it’s there nonetheless and it can have a huge impact.

FV: I agree with everything you just said, Caro, and there’s one other aspect that comes to mind: we’ve just witnessed that we have this real capacity to mobilize collectively when faced with an emergency situation. We’ve been able to achieve things together — as citizens, as businesses, as governments — that we never thought we’d be able to do. And now, I expect us to do the same for all these issues that may seem to be less urgent, whether they’re social or environmental issues. I believe that keeping up this pace and level of pressure is our collective responsibility.

Because when we’re not dealing with the virus in a few years, we’ll be dealing with water levels rising. And that’s coming fast. So, we have to keep in mind what we’re going through right now and remind ourselves that we’re able to make dramatic changes. I believe in us.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Caro Loutfi is the executive director of Apathy is Boring, and Fabrice Vil is the co-founder and president of Pour 3 Points.

6 Degrees: How has the current context of COVID-19 changed your work? More specifically, how has it changed the impact of your work?

If we put enough pressure on the government, maybe they would start collecting that data.

FV: I look forward to reading that report. It’s being released next fall?

6 Degrees: What is a call to action you might have for the government, individuals, or leaders on how to be active citizens in this current context?

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

By Sejla Rizvic

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to adopt a whole new glossary of terms with which we may not have been familiar. References to N95 masks, intubation, and R0 (the number used to describe the estimated rate of disease transmission) have all entered the public discourse, and some terms may still be unclear — such as the precise difference between “self-isolation” and “quarantine.” This new vocabulary can lead to uncertainty and misinformation during a time when clarity of language is most needed.

To further confuse things, the virus itself has been referred to by several different names, including simply “coronavirus” (the name for the broad category of viruses it belongs to), “COVID-19” (the name of the disease caused by the virus), and “SARS-CoV-2” (the name of the current strain of the virus).

Experts warn that when confusion about language is combined with the anxiety of living through a global pandemic, it can create an environment where misinformation flourishes. This can be dangerous to public health for many reasons, including the potential for discrimination and racism.

We see this in the use of terms like “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese virus,” which have been picked up by right-wing media outlets and, until quite recently, used by U.S. President Donald Trump, fueling already rampant anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism during the pandemic.

In February, the Asian American Journalists Association came out with recommendations “Urging journalists to exercise care in their coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in China to ensure accurate and fair portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans and to avoid fueling xenophobia and racism.” The guidelines advised news outlets not to use photos of Asian people wearing masks or generic images of Chinatowns in articles without providing proper context, as their use could further stigmatize those communities. The association also warned against the use of terms like “Chinese coronavirus” and “Wuhan virus,” which imply a connection between the virus and a geographic location — an assumption that experts agree is both harmful and inaccurate.

“That term, at this point, obscures more than it clarifies,” says Gregory Trevors, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of South Carolina who studies misinformation. “More cases of the virus are outside Wuhan rather than inside Wuhan. And nothing about the virus makes it ‘Chinese,’” he explains. “So, it’s not a useful term.”

There are numerous historical examples of names that stigmatized communities and promoted incorrect information about the origin and transmission of a disease. An outbreak of hantavirus, first identified after the death of a Navajo man in 1993, became known as a “Navajo disease”; Ebola, named for a river near the region where it was discovered, led to countless racist incidents targeting West Africans in 2014; and the disease we now know as AIDS was once called GRID, or “gay-related immunodeficiency.” Names like these can lead to less effective policy measures, fuel xenophobic attacks and discrimination, and contribute to widespread public misinformation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has had guidelines for naming new viruses in place since at least 2015. They recommend against the use of geographic locations and other factors that could be misleading or encourage discrimination. But the formal process of naming diseases can be tricky, and once certain names are popularized it becomes difficult to change them.

According to Trevors, the impulse to accept stigmatizing information from dubious sources is linked to our emotions and the way we make decisions in uncertain situations. “When we have fear and anxiety, we’re drawn to find certainty. We don’t like that uncertain state,” he says. “So we try to seek out something that makes us feel security in our lives.

“If we don’t really have a good handle on germ theory, we’re going to grab onto pretty much any information that makes us feel like, ‘Oh yeah, I finally have a handle on this, I finally have some knowledge that’s going to protect me.’”

A recent report from the WHO echoes this claim, connecting the stigmatization around coronavirus to three factors: the new and unknown aspects of the disease, our fear of the unknown, and the tendency to “associate that fear with ‘others.’”

Unfortunately, this thinking tends to lead to harmful and inaccurate conclusions, and moves us farther away from the global and community-level cooperation needed during a crisis.

“It is damaging. It undermines cooperation, it undermines the idea that we have a shared goal, a shared stake in the situation,” says Trevors. “Every time we use divisive language like that it just further undermines our capacity to respond the way we need to respond.”

While the language surrounding coronavirus continues to change, a concerted shift toward terminology that is accurate, compassionate, and resistant to misinterpretation can have profound effects. In a press conference on March 20, Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist working for the WHO, explained why the organization had decided to switch to using the term “physical distancing” rather than “social distancing.”

“[P]hysical distance from people so that we can prevent the virus from transferring to one another; that’s absolutely essential. But it doesn’t mean that socially we have to disconnect from our loved ones, from our family,” she said. During times of crisis, social cohesion and support is essential to promote public health.

By Sejla Rizvic

Canoo member Mariam Ghaffar immigrated from Pakistan to Canada about five years ago. She chose to settle in Calgary, AB, in part due to the simple fact she had family in the city. She received her Canadian citizenship in June of 2019. Mariam is excited to be an active citizen, and for her, active citizenship means “fulfilling my duties and knowing my rights” as a Canadian.

What Mariam loves most about Canada (and Calgary in particular) is the friendly people, the vast diversity and multiculturalism, and the clean environment and natural areas. She regularly uses the Canoo app to gain free, day-use admission to national and provincial parks in Alberta for herself and her three children. Of the many she’s visited, her favourites are Jasper National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park. “It’s so beautiful!” explained Mariam about Waterton Larks, “The lakes, the rocks, everything is magical!”

Although all national and provincial parks are temporarily closed for now, Mariam is excited to get back outside when the weather is warmer and the restrictions are lifted. She hopes to get in a few more visits with her Canoo app (which she calls “excellent!”) before her membership expires.

Samra Habib’s book, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir, is screaming at you. The cover is bright, present, bold, and certainly intriguing, and the words inside are not dissimilar. Taking the reader through her personal childhood journey, from her story of migration to the messy, beautiful, complicated experiences that have grounded who she is today, one almost feels as if they’ve picked up a diary.

When the book begins, we are in Pakistan. We meet Habib’s family; we are familiarized with her likes and dislikes, what her parents reward her for and what she is punished for, her frustrations, her passions, and her future goals and dreams. Habib lays a foundation that allows readers to navigate her personal development with a deeper understanding of her origins and influences. Again, it feels as if one is reading young Habib’s diary — the emotions feel raw and present, as opposed to remembered and reflective.

It should be said, however, to the readers who are looking for another narrative on the “Good Immigrant”, someone who escaped their backward country for the promise of a free life in Canada and is inherently grateful: you will be disappointed. Of course, Habib is grateful, as she reflects later on, but she does not ever paint Pakistan as a place she wanted to escape from. She thinks back on that time of her life rather fondly.

Habib’s childhood in Canada is for the most part quite difficult, painful, and lonely. She deals with racism and discrimination, both directed at her and her family. She bears witness to the difficulties her family has in adjusting, in finding work, in paying bills, and in finding community. Bearing witness to your parents’ struggles, not only financially and socially, but also in being targets of discrimination and racism, can have lasting effects on a child, especially one who is still acclimating to a new language, culture, and lifestyle.

As someone who immigrated to Canada as a child with her parents, I could relate to Habib’s story. Seeing how my mother’s accent was received, how strangers in our building reacted to the smell of our food, or the stares my parents would get in public just for speaking in Farsi to one another, taught me what was and was not accepted in Canadian culture. It pushed me to lose my accent, to refuse my mother’s incredible home cooked lunches, and to never speak a lick of Farsi around an English-speaker. Painfully, I internalized a shame for my own ethnicity that I’m still learning to undo.

Habib goes through a similar journey. To avoid ridicule, she makes compromises until she feels safe enough to explore more authentic parts of herself, like her unique sense of fashion (in part inspired by her Pakistani roots) when she’s older. Habib’s entire journey is about learning, unlearning, and relearning. From a young age, she learns what is important to her family, her cultural roots and traditions, and then her Canadian peers. But as she grows older, she starts to deconstruct these truths and to question them for herself and sometimes even for others. In her unlearning, there’s confusion and sadness, but also excitement and growth. She falls in and out of love, in messy ways that feel contradictory to her growth. It’s at times frustrating, but mostly wildly relatable. She commits herself to new mediums of expression, like photography, and dedicates her energy and her intellect to storytelling through this platform. She questions and explores her sexuality, not just in terms of queerness, but in what it means to be attached to another human both physically and mentally. This is her unlearning — being open and vulnerable, trying new things, questioning norms.

Relearning is where we leave Habib. She discovers queer spaces and communities in Toronto, and she finds ways to share that with her family. She finds solace, connection, and above all, inspiration from other queer South Asian people and other queer Muslims. These new discoveries not only create a sense of belonging and even purpose for Habib, but further ignites her desire for visibility; she wants these stories to be shared, to be heard, and to be cemented in text, photography, video, music, etc.

We Have Always Been Here serves as written proof, not for all, but for those who can hold the text and see themselves in it. As a first-generation immigrant, so many parts of the book made me want to scream: I wanted to yell Habib’s words from the rooftops, I wanted to tell her stories to other people, because they were my stories. They were my complicated feelings and my messy experiences. Habib went through the painful process of learning, unlearning, relearning, and then shared that experience with us. This does not mean, however, that her story stands for all of us. It simply provides a foundation, a sense of community, and an urgency for others who can read this memoir and see themselves. We Have Always Been Here is proof of an experience and narrative that is otherwise at its best manipulated, controlled and diluted, and at its worst nonexistent. It is a narrative of existence, of being together, and therefore of “being” with just a bit more ease.

This book review was written by Niki Mohrdar, program assistant for Canoo.

As we were unable to gather in person for 6 Degrees Montréal due to COVID-19, we convened two brilliant writers — Jessikka Aro and Cory Doctorow — for a discussion on the challenges that disinformation poses and the need for societal resilience.

Aro is a Finnish journalist and information warfare expert. Doctorow is a British-Canadian writer and activist. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two laid out the current “epistemological crisis” we face, how the West’s push for improved media literacy can be weaponized by disinformation experts, the rise of big tech, and the challenges of defining, addressing, and removing hate speech online.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

6 Degrees: Jessikka, can you start with some reflection on your work and experience, and then you two can take it from there?

Jessikka Aro: I started investigating Russian trolls, and specifically their impact on citizens in 2014. I very soon learned that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were enabling this state-sponsored information warfare, propaganda, and disinformation. Unfortunately Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been really naive, even negligent. The companies have been more interested in securing their finances than our security. From my point of view, this all comes down to the rights of consumers. We as consumers, as the users of products, should be able to consume safe content. And at the moment, the content is not safe.

Cory Doctorow: I think that when we talk about disinformation, we put a lot of emphasis on the fact that people disagree about what’s true, and we don’t talk enough about how people know that things are true, which is to say, we over-theorize differences in beliefs, and under-theorize differences in epistemology. And I think that if we’re going to understand disinformation and why it’s effective right now, we need to examine our current epistemological crisis, the rise and rise of big tech, and the thing that enables the rise and rise of big tech, which is the rise and rise of monopoly and inequality.

I think that in a complex technological society, it’s not possible for individuals to assess the validity of everything just to survive the day. It’s been the historic media literacy claim: do your own homework, ask yourself what the speaker has in it for them, read up on the sources, and find out if it’s true.

Danah Boyd has talked about how that traditional media literacy rule of thumb is actually an incredibly easy thing to weaponize. “Do your homework” has its place, but I think rather than rendering technical subjects legible to lay people – and we’re all lay people in subjects we’re not experts in – what we’ve historically done to navigate this complexity is to have legible processes. This involves experts presenting different views, adjudicating claims, showing conflicts of interest, reassessing based on new evidence. And historically, that’s been how we know things: through a valid process.. What we’ve experienced over the last 40 years is a de-legitimization of the process, and that has created the fertile ground for believing in conspiracies.

This collapse of trust is what disinformation campaigns exploit, and while we should be trying to figure out how to get people to stop believing untrue things, we really have to reassure people — through action that makes power more pluralistic and accountable and attuned to the truth — that what our truth-seeking exercises conclude is true is actually true. And that way, they can rely on official accounts of truth – advice about vaccines, advice about economics – rather than having to find these cults of personality, where you find someone who seems like they know what they’re talking about and believe them, rather than looking to the experts.

JA: During my investigations, I found regular Finnish people who had changed their ideas, attitudes, or behaviour, specifically because they were impacted by Russian troll accounts with fake profiles, and pro-Kremlin blogs. We’re seeing now in this global health crisis that Russia is aggressively pushing more and more conspiracy theories about coronavirus. For example, that it’s actually the United States who created this virus, or that this virus is a way to attack China. The western world is trying to pre-empt the spread of this virus, and instead Russia is attacking us with trolls.

CD: Russians are gonna Russian. I come from a family of Soviet refugees, and am no apologist for Russian human rights abuses, or the corruption in the Russian state. We can do things to try to down-regulate Russian bad activity, but what we really should be focusing on doing is increasing our resilience.

Russia is a failing, desperate, flailing state: it has increasing mortality, it has decreasing productivity, it is in chaos.

JA: And think about that country being our neighbour!

CD: Right? So if this disintegrating basket-case of a petrostate presided over by a guy who’s frankly not that smart, and who manages to run the country by either terrorizing people or impressing them by wrestling bears, if they can have such an out-sized impact on the rest of the world, we should worry about that guy, but we should also worry about what it says about our lack of resilience. What did 10 years of austerity in the Eurozone do to people’s trust in their institutions? People believe in terrible things in concert with the terrible things going on in their lives, and people stop believing in institutions when those institutions fail them.

JA: You talked about this distinction between true or false — that is one aspect of disinformation. In my experience, the most harmful forms of information warfare are crimes conducted; we’re talking about illegal threats, libel, inciting hatred against minorities. That’s what’s in the toolbox of the Russian security services. I understand that for social media giants it’s really difficult to start judging whether they’ll allow people to spread conspiracy theories, but please, can they stop the crimes?

CD: Patrick Ball, from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, worked closely with the Yazidi during the genocidal attacks, and one of the things that the Yazidi did was upload video with first person accounts of the attacks and video evidence. These were taken down as extremist violent content. This is the central question of how we get justice for the most brutally victimized victims of this kind of criminal act. If we’re worried about hate speech inciting violence, then we need also to worry about the violence in itself.

JA: About defining hate speech, and the difficulty of defining hate speech, I agree to a certain point. It can be really difficult, for even highly educated moderators of traditional media comment sections. Because language is beautiful and eloquent, and you can do so many wonderful, and horrible, things with it. But then, part of the stuff that Facebook and other companies are letting slip through the cracks is not really rocket science. Part of it is groups that harass and attack and stalk individuals, and fantasize about their deaths. Users have tried to report these groups, and I went to Silicon Valley to the Facebook headquarters to report them personally, and they still exist.

CD: I don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. I think they’re a force for evil in the world.

What you’ve identified is the impossibility of responsibly operating a platform at the scale that Facebook operates at, or that Google or Twitter operate at. If you have 2.5 billion users and you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you have to handle 25,000 one-in-a-million user cases a day. You’re not going to get that right.

I think we should just break them up. I think we should just shatter these companies. With something like GDPR, we said “if you want to collect all this data, then you have to spend all this money to create a compliance regime to ensure that you’re handling it responsibly” and a year later there are no European ad tech companies, only American ones, because they’re the ones who can afford it. Instead, we should just say “Don’t collect data. No collecting data. Illegal. And if we catch you doing it, we break your company up, we fine you so much that you go out of business, we jail your executives.”

JA: I completely agree. Thank you for bringing that up. I’ve been wondering why Facebook and other companies haven’t been sued by so many people, by so many nations.

In Finland, everyone is quite well educated. We have free university, too. That might be one reason we’re often referred to as a really resilient nation. It’s a great philosophy, and policy. Of course it’s not possible everywhere, but that’s really where the best resilience comes from. It comes from being able to critically read the media, to critically read the internet, to recognize fake news, to recognize argumentation mistakes, the real basics of what they’re teaching in Finnish classrooms. Also, regulatory options are needed, not just by the European Union, but also in North America, where they have the most power to really regulate these companies.

Then of course any type of voluntary efforts – journalists are training kids for free, going around to schools. But what I’ve really been wondering is that there is not a massive citizen-led voluntary action against these social media giants; the tyranny, basically. I don’t know why so many consumers are accepting this as the new norm and the new reality. Robert Mueller’s investigation about Russian interference in the U.S. election revealed that 126 million Americans had been impacted and touched by Russian trolls before the election. As a government, wouldn’t you want to protect your citizens?

There are different roles for governments, tech platforms, and citizens to play in addressing, mitigating, and building resilience to disinformation. Read about the ICC’s Citizen Resilience Project here, and check out interviews with Swedish philosopher Åsa Wikforss, and members of the global online counterspeak movement.

It has been a challenging time for the arts and culture sector. The volume of cancellations and closures has left many organizations, on the one hand, quickly responding to the sudden changes, and on the other, seriously wondering what their future looks like. The challenges are ongoing as museums, galleries, festivals, and theatres continue to grapple with difficult decisions every day. With this in mind, it is the second question we wish to dedicate this newsletter edition to, as a respite from the hardship and as a reminder of what lies ahead.

Without diverting attention from the more immediate challenges, we have to wonder what the longer-term implications of these adjustments and, in some cases, dramatic changes will be. How will this crisis transform the arts and culture sector?

We have asked different leaders from arts and culture to share their thoughts on what they see as possible paths forward. Their responses offer a diversity of perspectives and point at different opportunities for action. Here’s what they have to say

It’s too early to say exactly what the sector will look like on the other side. We may be on the verge of a paradigm shift in the way museums operate.

During the pandemic, we have seen some museums pivot quickly, providing virtually accessible resources. These contributions reinforce the value of museums and the critical role they can and must play in society.

That being said, museums risk not being able to fulfill their much-needed role. Several have closed their doors, exhibits have been cancelled, collections lack the constant care normally afforded to them, and many workers have been laid off. We worry about the hardest hit, the many small museums.

We appreciate the government’s relief efforts, but they are not enough to ensure the sector’s viability. So we are advocating for a dedicated museum relief fund to support lost revenues and an emergency development fund for digital activities. We are also maintaining pressure to update the 30 year-old National Museum Policy. If funding was at the appropriate levels and if what the policy covers was modernized, museums could ostensibly be better poised to weather the situation.

There’s no question the museum sector will need to adapt to a new reality. I remain hopeful that with adequate support and modernized policies, the future of our sector is bright.

Right now, many of us are in rapid response mode. But, for those of us who have a bit of capacity, I hope we have some time to dream about the future. Here’s an article I wrote about how to slow down, take stock, and reimagine my role in building a more equitable future.

The question I’m holding is – how do we want to transform ourselves in the long term because of this crisis? What new futures do we want to create? If we acknowledge that “normal” was not fully equitable, how can we change that?

Because of these questions, I’m spending a lot of time visioning. Especially for cultural organizations, I think it’s meaningful to envision how we want to reopen and who we want to be our partners in making that happen.

If you have five minutes, I invite you to write a journal entry imagining that bright day, and how the world might be different. It might help you figure out what you most want to do next.

COVID-19 is forcing the music industry as a whole to take a step back and reevaluate how musicians and audiences interact with each other.

So much of what drives music revenue is built around the gathering of human bodies, in large quantities, into contained spaces. And both medical and music industry professionals agree, we likely won’t be able to do that again for quite some time.

Perhaps here is where change can happen and it can be driven by each and every one of us.

In the past few years, the music industry was scrambling to find ways to remain relevant. Record labels were becoming artist management companies and large concert promoters owned all the commercial radio. Now that we’re in lockdown, we still see how relevant music remains while the gatekeepers put in place to profit from art become less and less relevant.

As music consumers, we have the power to engage and support our favourite artists directly through digital portals created by and for artists. We have the collective power to support locally and to help emerging and mid-career artists flourish both financially and creatively.

And artists need to not just adapt to the technology but expand the constraints of these platforms through creative and unorthodox thinking. Musicians must become well-rounded creatives, capable of not just writing and performing songs, but delivering eye-catching visuals and theatrical experiences built on multi-disciplinary methods and aesthetics.

A return to directly empowering local, grassroots artistic communities is a tangible step towards an equitable and inclusive arts economy.

COVID-19 has already been transformative for many within the arts and culture sector. From the fear of layoffs to anticipated budgetary cuts over the next while, the arts and culture sector faces an uncertain path forward.

But within this uncertainty, lies opportunity.

What has become apparent within the COVID-10 crisis is the importance of human connection within a context that is, necessarily, limiting our ability to connect in person. In this context, the arts and culture sector can play a key role in generating and maintaining human connection.

As such, COVID-19 may indeed act as a catalyst for a reinvigorated commitment on the part of cultural institutions to fostering empathy, understanding and connection, and doing so in innovative ways. For instance, encouraging institutions to experiment with new, remote ways to connect and to share stories is just one way in which the focus of our work has already changed; as this crisis develops, it may also engender new innovations in delivery and communication for the sector as a whole.

New formats for delivery and communication to foster human connection may also necessitate other changes within the sector, beyond the immediate. For instance, a greater focus on digital engagement and the retention of specialists in the field of online design and delivery may be required. In addition, an understanding of the barriers to access that many face in a digital world reveals deep structural inequity and will surely require institutions and professionals to find innovative ways to enhance inclusion and participation.We can all agree that this is a terrible time for humanity. COVID-19 endangers lives, weakens the vulnerable and creates collective anxiety, particularly notable in the arts sector, which now finds itself disoriented. These are violent times in many ways, but they could lay the ground for profound transformation and place meaning at the centre of our existence and our organizations.

Upon leaving the camp in 1946, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote about the importance of meaning as a true source of resilience. According to him, the question wasn’t what do I expect from life? but rather what does life expect from me? Considering what we could give over what we couldn’t get as a way to create meaning. This can help us ask ourselves some good questions in relation to our cultural institutions:

What do we want to cultivate?

Whom and what do we want to care for, individually and collectively?

Why do performing arts? For what purpose? Why?

Where are the needs?

How can we help today?

Let’s use our creativity and collective intelligence to answer these questions. Let’s use the limitations as a basis for inventiveness. Let’s put aside the past and the future that cause us so much anxiety and focus on how to honour the living right now. This is certainly the best position from which to build trust with our communities and become part of a new system.

One of the main challenges museums will face after COVID-19 is having to balance the pressing need to collect and preserve the testimonies of those who have been most affected, with the obligation to adhere to strong ethical principles such as the minimization of harm and respect for human dignity.

Many of these communities, which have been historically excluded or misrepresented in many of our museums, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Museums have a responsibility to ensure that the stories of the underrepresented won’t be lost, overlooked, exploited or replaced by privileging only heroic narratives.

I believe and I hope that after COVID-19, museums will be pushed to be more self-reflective and work more ethically when researching, collecting, archiving, interpreting and exhibiting the stories of historically marginalized communities.

It is our responsibility as museum professionals to bring these discussions to light so that the museum sector can emerge stronger and in solidarity with the communities we intend to serve.

The global creative community has taken a remarkable leadership role in organizing, adapting and responding to the health emergency. This timely and proactive reaction has raised visibility of the sector, establishing it as a fundamental and necessary part of contemporary life. I am confident that this recognition will help strengthen public budgets for the sector and will lead to greater sustainability for the community.

A large number of cultural activities have been virtually reprogrammed using digital technologies, immediately multiplying their audiences and global outreach. These creative endeavours have helped to alleviate the psychological stress of millions of people who are in isolation, preventing the spread of the virus.

This renewed presence of cultural goods and services enriches the cultural diversity within the digital landscape. Most importantly, it reminds us that on the other side of the pandemic culture and art await us in a physical space; a place where the desires, illusions and dreams of humanity coincide globally. The day we get to attend our first concert after these adverse times, we will experience it as if it was our first time. We will never forget the value of culture again.

*These responses have been edited for clarity and length

In these challenging times, we are seeing communities come together to support their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, we are also seeing certain communities become the target of hateful attacks online and off.

Mathieu Marion, a member of francophone group #JeSuisLàCanada, shared his perspectives on combating hateful, false and misleading information through counterspeak, COVID-19, and why what happens in digital spaces matters in the physical world.

Can you describe what the counterspeak movement is and why groups like #JeSuisLà are important?
I think the counterspeak movement aims to neutralize social media’s multiplier effect on all kinds of hateful information that impacts our ability to get along and harms the health of our rule of law and our democracy. These networks give higher visibility to hateful rhetoric that can influence public opinion by polarizing it into extreme political positions and even provoke attacks like the massacre at the Sainte-Foy mosque in January 2017. So, we have to react and do our part as community members.

Unfortunately, Facebook (to cite just one example) very rarely removes hateful comments or statuses after one or more complaints and when they do, it’s random. Certain media in Québec (like CBC or La Presse) have recently started to moderate their Facebook pages to remove hate speech. But the situation isn’t ideal. There’s still work to do.

However, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms, responding to a hateful comment isn’t effective: the discussion that follows never convinces the original poster to change their opinion and it draws attention to the hateful comment, rather than minimizing its reach.

And people often get worked up and might end up replying with insults, risking getting their own account blocked if Facebook says what they wrote violates its community standards. So, it’s not worth the time and it actually does the opposite of what’s intended. Plus, extended discussions with extremists on social media has an impact on our mental well-being.

That’s why the #JeSuisLà tactic seems more promising. When you ignore other hateful comments on a thread and leave a positive comment using facts and reasoning, plus hashtags like #JeSuisLàCanada and #JeSuisLàQuébec, your comment will get likes that will push the thread higher in the FB algorithm, making most of the hateful comments invisible and drawing the attention of new people who view the thread away from those comments.

We’ve noticed that comments with these tags rarely prompt hateful responses. The tags seem to dissuade people.

Why did you decide to get involved with the #JeSuisLà movement? Were you inspired by a particular experience, comment, or article?
I learned about #IAmHere in this Guardian article. After that, I was able to find and join the Canadian group #IAmHereCanada. I then got permission to use #JeSuisLàQuébec for a francophone team.

Given the political context in Québec, using just #JeSuisLàCanada would have had a negative effect because it would have been easy for nationalist critics to dismiss a comment with that hashtag as “federalist.” Unfortunately, it seems difficult to attract members for this francophone group at the moment.

From what you’ve observed, what topics are most likely to attract problematic comments?
In Québec, it’s topics around secularism and the Muslim headscarf that attract the most hateful comments because of the vigorous public debate on questions such as reasonable accommodations that led to the Bouchard-Taylor report in 2008, the Parti Québécois “charter” in 2013-2014 and more recently, the Québec ban on religious symbols. Another topic to add is immigrants entering Canada unauthorized at Roxham Road on the border with the United States. Most of the immigrants are of Haitian or African descent and they’re targeted in racist reactions.

Immigration in general is a hot topic because Quebecers in some age groups and regions are afraid that their people and culture will disappear and see immigrants as a risk to their survival. Reducing the number of immigrants is a recurring topic currently. Multiculturalism is also often criticized because it’s seen as a policy aimed at destroying Québec, rather than respecting the rights of minorities and helping them integrate.

Other topics like climate change lead to outbursts that target Greta Thunberg, young people ecologists, etc., rather than minorities.

In the context of COVID-19, what has changed in terms of the involvement of participants and/or the content that you see online in the news and comment sections?
At first, COVID-19 had a calming effect: the main columnists that feed xenophobia in the province turned their attention elsewhere. But for some time now, fear is pushing people to look for scapegoats for the crisis and media content that mentions Jewish, Indigenous, or Muslim people often receives many racist comments.

In terms of dangerous, hateful, misleading or poorly informed remarks, what action would you like to see from government? Civil society? Ordinary community members?
I don’t really think the government can do much without running the risk of getting accused of censorship. However, certain politicians — like Maxime Bernier — should stop adding fuel to the fire in order to gain sympathy and votes. Others need to become more aware of the reality on social media and the abuse that happens there. I would say that the first issue is having independent media, an essential condition for the health of our democracy. They have financial difficulties and the government should find a way to finance them better.

In Québec, there are a number of organizations doing effective work, like the Commission des Droits de la Personne et des Droits de la Jeunesse and the Ligue des Droits et Libertés. Here again, the financial means to do good work should be provided. Unfortunately, the Quebec Press Council is not a very effective tool for countering fake news and hate-filled columns.

As for regular community members? I’d love to see more of them join #JeSuisLàCanada!

We spoke with Alena Helgeson, founder of #iamhereCanada, on her efforts to combat hateful, false and misleading information through “counterspeak”, COVID-19, and why what happens in digital spaces matters in the physical world.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you describe what the counterspeak movement is, and why online groups like #iamhere are important?
Counterspeaking is basically going into platforms or social media comment sections, and creating an alternative message. We’re seeing a vocal minority that is trying to perpetuate a particular message that isn’t true — disinformation, or lots of subtle (or not so subtle) racism — so to be able to provide a message of facts really helps. The silent majority can see [that message] and can start to balance what might be true and what might not be. Plus, counterspeaking helps carve out space so that people who might feel silenced or marginalized have that space to share their thoughts and their viewpoints.

I’ve talked about the Dangerous Speech Project out of Harvard — they really focus on what dangerous speech is. Hate speech is very subjective. What might be considered hate speech to one person might not be to another person.

Dangerous speech is any type of expression — whether it’s written or pictures — that will increase the risk of one group violently attacking another, or even being tolerant of violence. When President Trump talks about the “Chinese Virus”, that’s not really hate speech, but it is dangerous. What it’s doing is inspiring or activating groups of people to start doing a lot of anti-Asian attacks. We’ve seen that with Muslim people or Indigenous people — we see things that aren’t hateful, but certainly stirs the pot so people will be more tolerant of acts against those groups.

That’s really why it’s important that there are counterspeaking measures, so that that tolerance level doesn’t change, or so that it doesn’t swing so that society accepts attacks and hate.

How do you know what platforms, news articles, and comments to engage in?
In our group, we’ll invite people to look for articles and things through social media. Every day one of our moderators will go through and scan news articles, and we look for anything that can be thought of as dangerous speech, or hate speech, and then we post that in our group and invite members to go and make comments on it. They link their comments to the thread in the group, so that we can go support them.

Why did you choose to get involved with #iamhere? Was there a particular moment, comment, or article that inspired you?
A couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend and he started talking about all these anti-Muslim things, and how he was afraid because he knew that as soon as [Muslims] got that call from their religious leaders, they would kill all the white people, including him and his neighbours. And I was really surprised that anybody [I knew] would think that. And then I started thinking that if he thinks that, and was so able to shift into that mindset, there must be other Canadians that feel that same way, too.

I started doing some digging and ran into the the #iamhere movement, and I joined the U.K. group to see how they worked and what they did. There are a lot of issues that are very universal, so I was able to interact with them.

And then [the shooting of] Colten Boushie happened. And that tragedy sparked so much hate in the media, and on social media, that we just thought it was time to start something in Canada.

What are the most common topics you see problematic comments on?
Racism is huge; Islamophobia, LGBTQ2S+ issues all across the world, gender, anything that has to do with women. Climate change — Greta Thunberg is a huge, huge target. There are so many people that attack her everywhere. And in Canada and Australia, anything related to First Nations communities is also always very inflammatory.

And then recently, with COVID, very anti-Asian stuff.

In the context of COVID-19, what has changed in terms of participant involvement or the content you see online in news stories and comment sections?
We’ve noticed that anything to do with COVID — and maybe it’s because people are feeling oversaturated — participation levels have really dropped. A lot of conspiracy theories in the comments, lots of disinformation, lots of people suddenly thinking that they [are experts on] viruses and healthcare. And, again, many comments against Asians.

When you say participation has dropped, do you mean participation from #iamhere members? Yeah. Within the group there are fewer people wanting to interact with those posts as they go by. Right at the beginning there were lots of people jumping in with proper facts, and now it’s sort of dwindling a little bit.

People, I think, are just tired. So, we’ve tried to counter that by sharing really positive stories: volunteer work, or business owners giving away food to homeless people, or landlords going out and buying groceries for their senior residents.

What do you say to those who criticize that engaging in counterspeak is just “feeding the trolls”?
We’ve heard that argument before. When we interact online, we try really hard not to engage the trolls. You don’t see a lot of us countering them directly. What we’ll do is post a standalone, objective, fact-filled comment that people can boost or reply to. When we ask members to do a standalone, that helps, so that you don’t accidentally boost the comment of a known troll or someone sharing disinformation, because commenting on it amplifies it.

Also, you don’t always have to make a comment. You can go in and support the ones that we suggest supporting, or find other ones worth boosting.

What would you say to people who withdraw from online spaces because they feel that they are targeted due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality?
That’s really hard. The common reaction is to just not want to engage. Lots of people withdraw, and don’t read comments — it’s a coping mechanism — but their voices are necessary. We’ve talked about how diverse Canada is, and we need those diverse voices. We need those voices to help set the tone and shift the conversation. And they can tell us when they’re feeling attacked or targeted. We’re 150,000 strong worldwide, so when they need help we can call in those groups. They just need to know they’re not alone.

Can you share an example of a time you were able to effectively support someone online or address an incorrect or problematic narrative?
Don Cherry’s comments before Christmas was a big one. There were lots of articles — some of them supporting what Don Cherry said, and some of them just reporting. We would see a lot of people saying “well that’s just the way he is”, “ he’s always been like that”, “‘you people’ could be anybody”. So we were able to go in and break down what it meant, and why it was problematic.

We try to show people that they’re not the only ones speaking out against something hateful. It’s one of the ways we carve out space for people to share their opinions, and it helps when we comment as well, because it encourages others to speak up.

What role can we play as advocates for one another without speaking on behalf of someone else?
The last thing we need are saviours. I was talking to my partner, who is never sure how to help in these situations. He doesn’t want to go in as a white guy acting like a superhero. I think it helps to be able to redirect to the voices of the people who are marginalized. If I’m commenting on something that’s anti-Asian, then he can come in and support or amplify my comment. That’s one way that it’s great to be an ally — letting marginalized voices be heard, and supporting them, without speaking for them.

Many people right now are finding that they have more time on their hands. Do you see this as an opportunity to get involved in more of this work?
I think we’re in a time of a great reboot. It’s a time to be able to reflect on what you want to do, and how you see yourself. I think it’s making people slow down and giving them a chance to listen to their heart.

With regards to time, we know that people are scrolling through right now more than they’re speaking up. They can find the time to be more of an activist, if they choose to be. I like to think that we’ll be a more compassionate world when we get out of this thing.

How would you help someone see work with #iamhere as volunteer work, or activism – just like getting involved in your community?
We have to stress that online work is activism. You’re creating a narrative. We see the influence of what’s being said online when it carries into real life. Online you create narratives, you create perspectives on different topics, whether it’s Indigenous people, or refugees, and we hear those things being echoed in grocery stores. It’s so important to engage online.