This content was created by Xtra’s branded content team alongside ODLAN, separate from Xtra’s editorial staff.
It is just a first step, but a new feasibility study has examined what would be some of the challenges and barriers to creating an online tool where anti-2SLGBTQIA+ hate can be reported without engaging with the police.
Released this fall, the Reporting Anti-2SLGBTQIA+ Online Hate: A Feasibility Study was created by the Ontario Digital Literacy and Access Network (ODLAN) and Wisdom2Action Consulting Ltd., as part of their work on the development and implementation of a project entitled Digital Resilience: Addressing the Rise of Transphobic Online Hate through Community-Based Research
Vivian Lee, the director of education and strategy at ODLAN—it works to advance safe, accessible and inclusive digital spaces for 2SLGBTQIA+ communities—is one of the researchers who authored the report.
“We’ve seen a number of increased hostilities toward our community over the last few years, so we are focusing on practicality and community impact, and this study explores how such a tool could be implemented,” Lee said.
As part of the feasibility study, the researchers interviewed representatives from Project 1907—which provides spaces for diasporic Asians to understand their histories, explore identities, examine privileges, and reclaim power—the Coalition of Muslim Women of Kitchener-Waterloo, and the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre. Each of those organizations has created a hate reporting system, whether through a website, app, in-person or by phone, where members of their communities can report instances of racism and hate.
“A tool like this is extremely important, and we found with our community partners and their respective reporting tools, that hate is frequently under-reported or not reported at all to law enforcement,” said Lee. “In this feasibility study, we saw that with all of our community partners that do this good work, they are all having the exact same issue, where they don’t feel like their community is safe with regards to reporting incidents federally, provincially, municipally.
“This is often to do with existing community relationship issues, and the historical and current harm being done to those community partners by law enforcement. So, there’s a great reluctance, and the community partners that we worked with definitely mentioned that they do not share their information with police.”
Lee said the information gathered by those three organizations is used to get a better understanding of what is taking place in their communities when it comes to incidents of hate and racism.
For example, Lee said the Coalition of Muslim Women of Kitchener-Waterloo has been tracking hate incidents in its community since 2010, so it has about 14 years of data. Every year it releases an annual report that analyzes what the community is experiencing versus what is being reported by Statistics Canada or other government institutions.
“It’s a way to do a checks and balances from a community led organization that has no real bias with regards to collecting information,” said Lee. “where funding from the government is not determinate on the numbers they produce, which is a chronic issues with institutionalized policing.”
Lee said that through ODLAN’s interviews with the three organizations, it found that developing and managing a reporting mechanism for reporting hate would face three main challenges: design elements, the use of data and operational realities.
The design elements might include the type of questions being asked, how those questions are worded, and whether the person reporting what happened to them can describe and explain the incidents in their own language. The use of the data includes how to make sure the information collected and then released is not weaponized, sensationalized or misrepresented.
And the operational realities refer to capital costs; the human resources and partnerships needed to build and maintain a hate-reporting tool.
“A lot of feedback that is stated in the report is that these organizations are chronically underfunded, under-resourced—and they are doing angelic work, quite frankly. We find that a lot of it is just a bunch of aunties sitting around a kitchen table who want to make a difference,” said Lee. “It is truly community led work. It is really impressive.”
Lee said the next step in the process of looking at the creation of a hate reporting tool will be the gathering of feedback from queer- and trans-led organizations about their experiences with online hate. More information about that research will be included in a report to be released in March 2025.
To learn more about the Ontario Digital Literacy and Access Network and the work it is doing, visit odlan.ca.
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