We need whole-of-society evidence-based approaches to address hate against minorities

By MATTEO VERGANI

The Christchurch terror attack conducted by Brenton Tarrant highlights the need to create policies to better understand and prevent hate.

As I have written in a blog post on the AVERT website, we need new media ethics protocols for media, journalists and tech companies, combined with better education for private social media users. You can read my blog post here.

At the same time, we need to develop national capacities to plan prevention, reduction and policing strategies. The ability of Australian state and federal governments to create policies to address hate against minorities is limited by the lack of data about the nature, incidence and trends of the phenomenon. As I explain in this article, it is imperative to foster a shared culture among all stakeholders of hate prevention, more oriented towards research evidence. The creation of an an integrated database containing de-identified data about hate against all minorities, and the development of a new victimization survey focused on the multifaceted expressions of hate against minorities, can allow us to understand the phenomenon and develop better policies to address it.

You can find some of my commentaries and media engagements in Italian language as well, here and here.


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