As part of its capacity building activities for members, and following on from the training held in October 2016, Equinet organised a second training session on social media use for equality bodies on 4-5 April 2017 in the Facebook Offices, Dublin.
Background
An equality body’s activities to seek a public profile are generally directed toward awareness campaigns, events to promote equality and non-discrimination, publications (guidelines, codes of conduct, toolkits, brochures etc.) and lately through social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube). According to the Equinet Report The Public Profile of Equality Bodies, written by members of the Working Group on Communication Strategies and Practices, at present just over half of Equinet members use one form of social media or another as an integral part of the promotion of their work.
Well organized and consistent social media engagement is important, either to communicate publicly or to exchange information with specific groups. However, dialogue can sometimes be difficult, such as providing answers, or avoiding disputes on the web. Furthermore, considering the increasing phenomenon of hate speech online, and the extensive discussion regarding the right to freedom of speech, the regular monitoring of content on social media channels is becoming more and more complex.
Equinet Training Session
This training session aimed to:
- Help Equinet members to use social media in a more strategic way
- Outline the possibilities of social media tools (monitoring, publishing, analysis)
- Share best practice and learn from ideas from both the public and charity/voluntary spheres
- Learn about new social media platforms
- Get an introduction to the paid social media channels and making the most of limited budgets
- Learn how to deal with negative aspects of social media
The training was provided by Mahtab Khan and Adam Stokes of eyewitnessapp.com. You can read the Summary here.
Presentations
- Social media for equality bodies – Mahtab Khan and Adam Stokes, Eyewitnessapp.com
Workshop 1: Where to begin with Social Media
- Developing your digital strategy – Katrine G. Pettersen, Equality and Antidiscrimination Ombud (LDO), Norway
- How to get the most out of your equality body’s social media usage – Josip Grgic, Ombudsperson for Gender Equality, Croatia
Workshop 2: How to get the most out of your social media use
- Developing new forms of content and handling problems successfully – Ann Kathrin Sost, Federal Antidiscrimination Agency (FADA), Germany
- Learnings from Social Media campaigns – Jack Gibson, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Ireland
Session 6: Successful Campaigns
- #NotGuilty Campaign – Ann Kathrin Sost, Federal Antidiscrimination Agency (FADA), Germany
- Video campaigns on disability in Denmark – Eno Krogh, Danish Institute for Human Rights
- Targetting different audiences – Personas – Katrine G. Pettersen, Equality and Antidiscrimination Ombud (LDO), Norway
Session 7: Tackling Negativity
- Tackling negativity and Monitoring – Jonas Batista, High Commission for Migration, Portugal
- Fighting negative comments on your pages – Zuzanna Rudzińska-Bluszcz, Commissioner for Human Rights, Poland