Search for Common Ground implemented the CREDIBLE project, supported by Asia REF, from January 2023 to May 2024 in collaboration with local partners Campaign, Indika Foundation, SEJUK (Journalist Association for Cultural Diversity), and Solopos Institute. The project focused on empowering traditional media editors and young social media influencers to effectively combat hate speech, promote religious freedom, rights, and peaceful messaging, and foster collaboration in addressing religiously motivated hate speech and misinformation while promoting religious tolerance and respect for human rights.
Context
In recent years, Indonesia has experienced a rise in violations and restrictions on religious freedom, leading to a deterioration of the nation’s heterogeneity. The polarizing effect of political campaigns during the last general election deepened religious and ethnic divides, and systematic failures to uphold international human rights standards, particularly regarding freedom of religion or belief, have not been adequately addressed. Prejudice, hate speech, and religious persecution against minorities are prevalent, both online and offline, and mainstream media often underrepresents and perpetuates victimization narratives of religious minority groups, while also being influenced by political partisanship and alignment with religious hardliners. To address these issues, efforts are needed to improve the handling of persecution cases, increase national outreach on religious freedom and tolerance, and enhance the capacity of positive narrative actors, especially youth influencers on social media, to promote respect for human rights and foster a more inclusive online culture.
Theory of Change
IF influential and credible actors on social media have the skills and capacity to develop evidence-based messaging campaigns that promote religious freedom and rights and IF these messages and campaigns are linked with effective online and offline interventions THEN the support for freedom of religions and beliefs will increase.
Methodology and Objectives
The project aimed to promote religious freedom and pluralistic values in Indonesia by focusing on building robust alternative messaging responses based on peaceful narratives and pluralism. The program adopted a technical approach inspired by previous Search initiatives in the past to promote positive narratives in the media, such as the Solidifying Religious Freedom in Indonesia project and the Promoting Peaceful Narratives to Youth project, as well as the Sri Lanka’s Cyber Guardians initiative, incorporating the “3C” model of interventions against online harm (Champion, Counter, and Content) along with a user journey approach to effective social campaigns. This approach has empowered youth influencers to create creative and relevant messaging to address religiously motivated hate speech.
To ensure the sustainability of the project, Search engaged youth influencers who have a substantial number of social media followers through capacity building activities that were designed to encourage these influencers to address freedom of religious belief in Indonesia. Additionally, Search involved media editors in workshops to address misinformation regarding religious minorities, with the goal of shaping how media outlets report on religious narratives.
Search’s activities and impact:
- Trained 112 youth influencers to detect hate speech and promote pluralism, peaceful messaging, and respect for other religions, 63.39% of them demonstrating increased knowledge on methods to do so.
- Supported the development and implementation of 20 youth-led campaigns to promote pluralism, peaceful messaging, and respect for other religions. Youth influencers used creative angles, connecting the issue of FoRB with themes such as travel, cuisine, culture, and to promote FoRB values to a wider audience. This approach proved to be successful, with the campaigns gaining a total reach of 5,609,204 and over 267,534 engagements online, while engaging over 982 individuals through community events.
Facilitated the establishment of four local networks through Youth Content Hub activities, connecting 146 actors of FoRB promotion, from young content creators, senior media editors, journalists, civil society organizations, to members of different religious groups. The content hub acted as a safe space for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and challenges in the promotion of FoRB through creative online media campaigns, resulting in collaborations between actors to support and amplify ongoing FoRB promotion activities.
