August 27 is #PositiveTwitterDay - an annual, civic initiative to promote greater civility on social media.
Moreover, it comes at an opportune moment, against the recent backdrop of racist abuses on Twitter and other platforms, directed most prominently at England’s black footballers.
Positive Twitter Day asks Twitter users to leave angry shouting matches aside and debate in a more polite, positive way – at least for one day of the year. It aims to spark a broader conversation, too, about how we might all shape the social media norms that we want.
The initiative came out of conversations in 2012, sparked by keen Twitter user Sunder Katwala, director of British Future (@sundersays), and other Twitterati who felt more could be done to promote a more civil online debate.
Social media companies need to play their part and there is a strong public appetite for them to step up. Research finds a broad inter-ethnic consensus for greater action to tackle online hatred: around three-quarters of ethnic minority citizens (72 per cent) and three quarters of white British citizens (72 per cent) agree that social media platforms need to take stronger action to remove hate speech, according to polling by Number Cruncher Politics for British Future. Just 7 per cent disagree.
Research conducted by ICM for British Future and the TalkTogether project found that 55% of people feel that social media drives us apart more than it brings us together – a view held fairly consistently among all sections of society.
Katwala said: “Positive Twitter Day asks people, just for one day, to think before they tweet: to take off Caps Lock and have a conversation, not a shouting match, with someone they don’t agree with.
“It’s about disagreeing better: asking what we can all do, as social media users, to set the norms of online behaviour that we want to see.
“The racist abuse of England footballers has shown the worst of social media this year. Toughening-up the rules and cracking down on offenders is a job that social media companies must take more seriously. There is a clear public consensus for stronger action to tackle online hatred. But we can all play our part, too, in making Twitter a more civil space.”
In his Eastern Eye column, Katwala explains the initiative that he started in August 2012, shortly after the London Olympics.
