To maximize reach and circulation, information about the program will be circulated by FOA and its local partner organizations (via social media, their websites, and newsletter/bulletin) prior, during, and after its completion. REACH sessions will be recorded and made available to participants who had to miss a session. However, active participation in the live sessions will be a precondition for joining the program. After each session, REACH participants will be sent the presentation used and summarizing printouts.
The webinar planned as part of REACH will be open to the general public, and invitations will be distributed across the network of the three partner organizations. This will further raise the profile of the REACH program and partner organizations.
The number of antisemitic items reported/removed during the program varies, depending on the participants’ level of engagement. We provide participants with the forum/structure (the program itself), knowledge (training sessions), support (mentoring, live monitoring, and virtual coworking space), and opportunity (the reporting challenge) to practice their newly acquired knowledge to maximize impact. Yet, since REACH is a training program, the impact is not restricted to the number of antisemitic items reported/removed during the four-week program but rather continuous and long-term. Participants acquire knowledge, skills, and tools which enable them to report antisemitic manifestations on social media independently after they finish the program.
In addition, FOA will instruct REACH participants to follow a two-step method of responding to hateful content that FOA found to be most effective. Participants report antisemitic content directly to the networks (based on the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism) and to FOA. Upon verifying that newly reported content is indeed antisemitic, FOA codes said content (type, network, date, hashtag, category, language, etc.) and adds it to a secure online database. The database is password-protected, ensuring that sensitive data is not misused. FOA keeps track of the content reported and periodically checks whether it was removed. If unremoved within a reasonable time, FOA, as a trusted flagger, approaches the networks directly to propel them to act. Such involvement resulted in a significant increase in antisemitic content removal rates.
Among the added values of the program are:
Educational activism – identify and respond to online antisemitism according to the IHRA working definition.
Positive impact- helping individuals to build resiliency and
Contribute to the community – removal of antisemitic content from social media benefits not only Jewish community users but the entire online community.
