21st Human Rights Seminar -- Discrimination and Harassment on the Internet
Update: December 13, 2018The 21st Human Rights Seminar, entitled "Discrimination and Harassment on the Internet," was held on Friday, December 7, 2018. This seminar is usually held every year sometime around the Human Rights Day (December 10) by the ICU Human Rights Committee and Human Rights Advisor' meeting , which conduct counseling and educational activities with regard to human rights.
This year, social psychologist Mr. Fumiaki Taka was invited as the speaker. Given the situation in recent years where discriminatory statements, against foreign nationals and people with foreign roots who are residents of Japan, are becoming widespread primarily over the internet, the participants sought to identify ways to avoid becoming assailants themselves by looking at a few discriminatory incidents, based on Mr. Taka's research that focused primarily on the biased and discriminatory treatment of ethnic Koreans residing in Japan.
Mr. Taka touched on the discriminatory statements being posted on SNS, especially on Twitter, and explained that it uses a mechanism known as bots for automatically posting information. He also explained, using examples, that the ease of spreading of information is not decided by its authenticity but rather influenced by whether it can be easily visualized and can stoke emotions. Furthermore, the initially posted information gets dramatized in the course of its dispersal and it transforms into something that can stoke up emotions even higher.
At the end of the seminar, Mr. Taka called upon the participants to use their good sense and act by clearly understanding that there are cases in which information, even though jokey and funny to you, would lead to discrimination.