Professor Cheer was contacted by the Community of Strangers team due to her years of expertise in media law. “I have been following and commenting on the proposals for change to our hate speech laws and saw this as an opportunity to help inform the community of the complexities involved,” she says. “I also wanted to offer my thoughts on the need for educational changes to improve social cohesion in New Zealand following the terrible mosque shootings.”
Professor Cheer urges caution in how hate speech is defined and penalised because “many people are very casual about how they use social media and do not realise the potential for harm resulting from online publishing. But this does not make them bad people or people who should be criminalised. What they need is education about online responsibility.”
While it is tempting to think that laws can solve problems, underlying societal problems often need to be addressed, she says. In her video interview for Community of Strangers, Professor Cheer calls for secondary school education on technology, racism and different world religions from year 11 onwards.
In an increasingly divided online world, “we need more diversity of opinion, and we need people to listen to all opinions and beliefs with maturity and respect. You can do this without accepting and adopting viewpoints you don’t agree with. This is really about learning to listen rather than speak. It is a crucial part of freedom of expression.
“Freedom of expression is about being able to speak, but also being able to seek out and receive expression of any kind, so long as harm to others does not result.”
Community of Strangers is a partnership project between Lady Khadija Trust, NZ and Telling Lives. The project ‘Community of Strangers’ seeks to explore the underpinnings of both bias and belonging within our species by providing an understanding of our evolutionary pre-disposition to favour those most similar to us. Phase one of ‘Community of Strangers’ explores the corrosive impact of cyber hate and its destabilising impact on freedom of expression and trust in New Zealand and is funded by InternetNZ.
Watch Professor Cheer’s video here.
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