[Authors: Ines Halifa Elidrissi and Violeta Padín Luc, Fundación Euroárabe | ECLIPSE]
As hate speech and digital manipulation enter the mainstream, traditional regulations are no longer enough. Discover why education, media literacy, and frontline civil society strategies have become our most powerful tools to build long-term digital resilience.
The rise of political polarisation and algorithmic amplification has normalised discriminatory narratives both online and offline, shaping contemporary public debate and social interactions. This article explores how international and European institutions and networks are pivoting toward educational frameworks—such as prebunking and critical thinking—to empower citizens and frontline practitioners against the toxic effects of online hate and disinformation.
Hate speech is increasingly moving into the mainstream and becoming a growing challenge across many contemporary societies [1]. While social media platforms play a central role in amplifying these narratives, broader phenomena such as political polarisation, the radicalisation of public discourse, and the rise of populist movements have also contributed to their normalisation [2]. Consequently, addressing hate speech requires approaches that go beyond legal regulation and content moderation. International organisations, European institutions, and civil society actors have increasingly recognised that legal and punitive measures alone are insufficient to address a phenomenon deeply rooted in cultural attitudes, emotional dynamics, and social and digital communication practices. In this context, education has progressively emerged as fundamental to raising awareness, challenging prejudices, and fostering resilience against discrimination and hate speech [3]. Rather than focusing exclusively on sanctioning behaviours, educational strategies seek to strengthen media literacy, critical thinking, empathy, and democratic participation in digital environments.
Why Education Matters
Many European bodies, such as the Council of Europe, which has developed key educational manuals on the topic, including Bookmarks: A Manual for Combating Hate Speech Online through Human Rights Education [4], increasingly highlight education as a long-term strategy that depends heavily on the training of professionals who work directly with vulnerable communities and digital issues, such as NGOs, law enforcement agencies, civil society organisations, and others. These actors play a key role in identifying discriminatory narratives linked to hate speech and disinformation and in building resilience against them, especially among users who do not always possess sufficient critical tools to assess online information.
Biases and Challenges in Educational Approaches
Despite its growing importance, education is not free from tensions and limitations. Educational programmes may struggle to distinguish between harmful discriminatory speech and controversial opinions that still form part of legitimate public debate. Perceptions of ideological bias also create challenges for educators and professionals, who must encourage critical reflection without contributing to polarisation or censorship. The rapid evolution of digital communication continuously challenges educational responses. Online hate speech increasingly appears through coded language, humour, memes, and algorithmically amplified narratives that evolve faster than traditional educational models.
Approaches to Educating About Hate Speech and Disinformation
Among existing efforts to introduce hate speech and disinformation training, the majority of the ones reviewed focus on schools and teachers, law enforcement officers and civil society organizations. Moreover, some content and pedagogical strategies appear to overlap across programmes targeting different end-users, suggesting that certain materials originally designed for schools could potentially be adapted for other audiences. When analysing the European arena, in terms of international standards, UNESCO plays a pivotal role in providing international guidelines on how to address hate speech through education.
Although primarily aimed at policymakers, they highlight the importance of addressing inequities, enhancing social and emotional skills, promoting inclusive attitudes, promoting media and information literacy skills and digital citizenship and improving skills in critical thinking [5]. The European Commission also has some toolkits and guidelines, specifically designed for educators. These resources offer definitions about hate speech and different forms of discrimination, as well as teaching about their root causes and suggesting activities to internalise these concepts and explore ways to counter them. They mainly focus on media literacy and analysis and social and emotional learning [6]. Moreover, different initiatives have been developed to introduce hate speech training in national training programmes: these are mainly guidelines for policy makers that call for the inclusion of clear definitions for law enforcement officers and the development of interdisciplinary training [7]. Fact-checking organisations and networks that work on a European scale play a crucial role in this educational discourse. Indeed, these organisations whose goal is to check the veracity of information also offer and coordinate training so people can see for themselves and learn how manipulation works.
The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) — a network which coordinates fact-checking organisations — offers a range of courses and guidelines for civil society end-users, as well as journalists, educators and policy makers. They approach educational training in different ways, by leveraging several resources, the main ones prebunking, debunking (fact-checking), media literacy training, and information reframing. Pagella Politica and Facta—two fact-checking organisations based in Italy—focus on courses that aim to educate citizens, while they also collaborate in school education. Their overarching approach is centred on grassroot efforts, where they focus on building public resistance to disinformation and hate speech, educating people on media literacy, proper fact-checking, dissemination of correct information, and building counter-narratives [8]. Similarly, Maldita in Spain not only offers courses to educate the general public, but has also developed toolkits and guidelines to train fellow fact-checking organisations and CSOs [9]. Fact-checking organisations, like the ones mentioned, also partner up with other entities — such as universities, civil society, private initiatives and public institutions—to jointly contribute to bigger projects, which focus on developing novel strategies for countering hate speech and disinformation while not losing sight of the educational component. They offer modules or include an “educational toolkit” specifically designed for teachers, educators working in NGOs, and CSOs.
Some of these toolkits include precise and agreed-upon definitions, media literacy training, how-to’s on fact-checking and “lateral reading”, training on how to respond to hate speech, as well as proposed activities to internalise the knowledge offered. A good example of this is Hatedemics [10], supported by the EU and with direct participation of European fact-checking and civil society organisations. Generally, all these initiatives seek to strengthen the role of civil society as a key contributor to preventing hate speech and to provide tools for the general public, particularly young people, to understand how disinformation operates and the impact of harmful narratives in society. The main topics taught are prebunking, media literacy, emotional education, fact-checking and counter-narratives creation. Prebunking, because it builds resistance for later disinformation, and counter-narratives, as they offer a direct contrast to that disinformation, have been mentioned to be particularly effective [11], and as a preventive method, are slightly more common. All in all, digital resilience and human rights education remain essential to face the poisoning effect that hate speech has on societies. While civil society organisations and frontline practitioners must continue to be supported in this regard, political figures must also contribute to not normalising hate with discourse that fuels violence and intolerance, so as to not undermine all these vital efforts.
Note: This article is based on ECLIPSE Deliverable D2.1 “Definition and Methodologies”.
