Brazilian Group Battles Racism With Billboards of Racist Tweets Throughout Nation
Brazilian civil rights group Criola is taking on Internet bullies and racist social media users with a campaign that posts their comments on public billboards all over the country.
The campaign, called "Virtual racism, real consequences," was created by Criola, which is run by Afro-Brazilian women, who along with the 7.6 percent of other black Brazilians, have been subjected to racism.
The group works to bring attention to issues of racial abuse. Brazil has laws against racial harassment, but they aren't always enforced.
To bring attention to the constant racism on social media, Criola took several comments from platforms like Facebook and Twitter and placed them on large billboards. The ads are then placed in the towns where the original commenters live.
While the names and the photos are blurred so that the person's identity isn't revealed, the point of the initiative is still very strong.
"Those people [who post the comments] think they can sit in the comfort of their homes and do whatever they want on the internet. We don't let that happen. They can't hide from us, we will find them," co-founder Jurema Werneck told the BBC.
One billboard features the comment, "If you washed properly, you wouldn't be so dirty." Another one mocks black journalist Maria Júlia Coutinho for her race.
The campaign was inspired by an incident involving Coutinho. The television weather presenter became the subject of harsh and abusive comments on Facebook after her photo was added to the Nacional Journal page.
The photo was posted on July 3, Brazil's national day against racial discrimination. While Coutinho received a lot of negative comments, she also garnered a lot of support.
The Criola campaign has received a lot of support from a lot of people in Brazil as well and from around the world on social media.
"Virtual racism, real consequences" - great campaign from Brazil publicly shames trolls https://t.co/7mZtFOMACv pic.twitter.com/QVv8PlrbRv
— Andrew Blakeley (@ABlakeley) November 30, 2015
well done brazil for the "virtual racism, real consequences" campaign: https://t.co/6mmnhXflcY — Juan Delgado (@wadus) November 30, 2015
According to The Huffington Post UK, the campaign also features facts and figures about racism on social media.
Josh Smith, a researcher and developer at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, shared the impact racism is having online in numbers.
"We picked up 6.7 million tweets over two weeks -- a 34 fold increase in the number of slurs used daily. This far outpaces the rise in the overall number of tweets since 2012, which has risen by only a fifth over the same period," Smith said.
Subscribe to Latin Post!
Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com