Football is known as "the beautiful game", but issues such as racism, corruption, hate speech, and hooliganism threaten to tarnish its reputation. AKS ZŁY, a grassroots club in Warsaw, offers an inspiring example of positive change. The club's commitment to gender equality and inclusion has earned it a UEFA Grassroots Award, and its work demonstrates that football can be a powerful tool for social change.
Read MoreIn times of upheaval, when people are concerned or unsure about the future, disinformation tends to spread easily. However, several grassroots movements have been working tirelessly to combat conspiracies and disinformation in the online sphere, using a variety of methods from memes and shitposting, to spamming comments with kindness.
Read MoreIf you've been on TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram in the past few months, you've probably seen people freaking out about the luxury fashion brand Balenciaga and their supposed involvement in claims of child sexualisation, even linking to a paedophile ring scandal…
Read MoreOn 24 February 2022, Russia launched a ground and aerial invasion of Ukraine that has killed more than 20,000 people, as of the beginning of December 2022. Almost immediately, Ukrainians started fleeing the country en masse. We wanted to understand what negative stereotypes and potentially xenophobic encounters and experiences a Ukrainian refugee might face in Western European countries.
Read MoreEver since Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg first addressed the United Nations at the age of sixteen, calling for school strikes until there is political action against climate change, she has been the subject of misogynist, ageist and ableist hatred online. We wanted to analyse English-language posts about her to see if there was an increase in toxicity surrounding her latest media appearances. Coincidentally, Elon Musk officially took over Twitter in the middle of our observation period as well.
Read MoreIn our fifth episode, we’re coping with fascist dictatorships. Fascism can be described as a political philosophy or regime that exalts nation, and often race, above the individual, and that stands for a centralised autocratic government with one dictatorial leader. And almost one year into Putin’s war on Ukraine, his regime comes dangerously close to being a fascist one. With worrying developments across the world, there are a number of other countries, such as Hungary, the Philippines, and more recently, Italy, that seem to come close to a fascist dictatorship as well. In this episode we’re joined by American-British financier Bill Browder, author of the Magnitsky act.
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