Dear organizers and participants of this session,
My statement is designed to highlight to storytelling as a cause for hate speech
on social media. Some scholars have called us – the humans - “social animals”,
while others portray us as “storytelling animals”. Indeed, we use social media to
tell stories because storytelling is necessary for our survival not just as individuals
but also as groups, communities or nations. It is absolutely normal to use social
media for storytelling. It is also normal to tell stories for survival. But the problem
is, stories inevitably contain bias, which may lead to othering and prejudice.
Othering and prejudice in turn lead to hate speeches that eventually end up in hate
crimes oftentimes against minorities. So, a basic challenge is, how to address such
dichotomic character of storytelling?
I offer you to take a brief look to the case of Azerbaijan that has adopted
multiculturalism as an official policy, and accordingly, shapes and reshapes its
stories to make them inclusive of minorities. Such inclusive stories assign a
positive role to minorities and highlight positive contributions from those
minorities to wider society. As a tangible result of such approach, credible
international institutions in particular US Department of State have reported for
many, consecutive years no anti-Semitic act in this Muslim-majority nation.
On this positive note, I conclude my statement by wishing a very good luck to all
of you in the work of the session. Thank you!