A new digital campaign aims to stop hate on the web
A new campaign has used some of Australia’s young filmmakers to fight online hate and extremism
Liverpool
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One of Sydney’s best known rappers L — FRESH the LION is front and centre of a new campaign aimed at ending hate speech, extremism and intolerance online.
It’s call Share Some Good and is being run by Youtube, which is owned by search engine giant Google. It’s a response to research conducted by RMIT and Latrobe University which found over 60% of Australian adults reported experiencing some form of online abuse in their lifetime, that 25% have been threatened online with physical violence and almost 18% have experienced race-based offensive or degrading messages and comments.
As part of its international “Creators for Change” campaign Youtube put the word out that it wanted young Australian filmmakers from all backgrounds to contribute their vision and idea of how best to combat the anger being seen and heard on the internet.
From the contributions 15 were short-listed and they have become the staring point for ShareSomeGood.
“We felt a responsibility to identify creators on Youtube who are spreading positivity,” said Sam Yorke the Public Policy and Government Relations Counsel with Google Australia. “To promote them, to amplify their voices, to give them training when they need it.”
“As a technology company we thought ‘what can our contribution to this be?’”
For Liverpool Rapper L — FRESH the LION (Born Sukhdeep Singh) and his collaborator Mirrah the vision was a blend of interview and freestyle rap, call the 90 second rap.
“We thought let’s create, let’s have some fun, put some pressure on the people that we’re interviewing,” said L-FRESH. “We give them 90 seconds, we ask them pretty challenging meaningful questions as well as some funny one and then chuck in a freestyle rap.”
That freestyle rap’s based in the answers given during the 90 second interview, and the result’s both informative and entertaining. Its creators have got plenty of ideas about who they’ll put under the microscope in the future.
“I think the initial idea was that we wanted to showcase what our peers are doing that is amazing. Outside their music a lot of them are doing a lot of really positive stuff in the community and living really ordinary lives as well. and we wanted to showcase that to the audience, that these are real people doing everyday things.
L-FRESH the LION was born and raised in Liverpool and he believes there’s more than enough talented artists there and across Westen Sydney to keep him and Mirrah busy. But the stars of sport and film are also an avenue they want to pursue.
“I’d love to do a segment with the GWS Giants. Get some players and we can do it in their gym. If I’m being honest I’d like to get Hugh Jackman in there. That would be pretty amazing. That’d be fun. He does great interviews. I think it’s something that he’d be down for and it would be great to get his insights on Australia. Where it’s at now and where it’s going to.”
The 15 films which made the cut cover topics as diverse as the backgrounds of the people who made them. “Stand by your name” makes the point that not everyone from a non English speaking background wants their name anglicised. “Where are you from” points out that a lot of Australian born people don’t fit into the blonde Anglo-Saxon stereotype.
Oliver Levi-Malouf, used his film “Dear Future Me” to look at the hopes and dreams of the LGBTI community. “I wanted to tell a story about young queer Australians that isn’t often seen something beyond the tragic storylines of suicide and drug abuse,” said Oliver.
“What just floored me when I saw them all was how different every single one of them is,” said Sam Yorke. “How different the idea is, how different the themes and issues are.”
Primarily the first 15 films come from NSW, with most of them made in Sydney. But next time Youtube wants to hear from filmmakers from everywhere. “We do. This is part of a global campaign, the “Youtube Creators For Change”. But in Australia at least we’ve been very keen to focus on representation from across the country. The next time around we hope to get a more geographically diverse group together.”
All the Share Some Good films can be found here.
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