SFLC.in is pleased to announce the release our report titled “Online Harassment: A Form of Censorship” on November 22, 2016 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Lecture Hall 1, India International Centre (Annexe), New Delhi, at an event we are organizing in association with the Digital Empowerment Foundation, Internet Democracy Project, IT for Change, and the Foundation for Media Professionals.
We have grown increasingly concerned of late by the appreciable spike in instances of online harassment across platforms. Whereas online speech platforms like social media websites, blogs, and discussion forums set the stage for unprecedented levels of public engagement in relevant policy discourses, the widespread prevalence of abusive, threatening, and otherwise hostile content threatens to seriously hinder the efficient utilization of these critical speech platforms. Our report is a compilation of findings from a year of research, and attempts to provide an insight into relevant national and socio-political factors influencing exploitative uses of the Internet.
To mark the occasion, the release of the report will be followed by a panel discussion featuring legislators, law enforcement agents, industry representatives, civil society actors and other stakeholders in the field. The panel will discuss the issue of online harassment in context of the report, and will address such topics as trends in online speech, self-regulation vs. state-regulation as a means to curb online harassment, potential areas of stakeholder engagement, and awareness generation and capacity building initiatives among others.
An agenda for the evening is available here. If you would like to participate, kindly send in an email to mamta@sflc.in no later than 3:00 PM this Monday (November 21).
