Ms Niamh McDonald:

I can speak to that. We came up from working with communities on the ground and understanding that the online sphere has a real-world impact. Members have a copy of the cycle of hate diagram to hand. I will start with the disinformation and hate speech. I will begin with that part of the cycle. If we look at that and go back to November 2022 when a lot of the anti-migrant mobilisations in our communities began, that led to a lot of real-world violence. A lot of disinformation and hate speech was generated and amplified online. The biggest point that has not yet been mentioned is that this is all being amplified by the recommender systems. A lot of this content will land on people's newsfeeds, on children's newsfeeds and those of young adults and older people, without them even seeking or looking for it. That is a big point that is missing. We see the amplification of the disinformation and hate speech. There is a lot of disinformation, as we have seen. That leads to isolation and exclusion in our communities. A lot of disinformation and hate speech others minoritised communities and creates a sense of isolation, exclusion and fear. We then come to polarised communities that feel they have to be fighting against each other for many different reasons, whether resources or fear. We then have the motivated haters and we see copycat tactics. For instance, we have documented 58 private "says no" Facebook pages with anti-migrant, far-right, Nazi content. Many of these have places where people can post anonymously, which means there is no record of accountability. We do not understand where that comes from through Meta, as it is on Facebook. We can see this as a pipeline of hyper-local private Facebook pages. We saw it during the local and European and elections. These pages can send copycat tactics straight across.

Deputy Ring is talking about canvassing. These are people who have gone out and tried to put cameras in the faces of canvassers or candidates and they copy that going from place to place. We saw that being copycatted across Facebook pages. That leads to the next part of the cycle, which is events and issues. We can see what led to the violence in Coolock on 15 July and to what we saw on 23 November in Dublin almost a year ago. It moves with speed. That creates a chill effect on mainstream politics, almost as though there is a fear of a backlash. People are almost pre-empting a backlash and therefore do not want to speak out. That will temper what needs to be said in politics. We then go on to a hardening of policies and reactionary narratives. That is a rollback on progressive policies, especially toward people seeking asylum. We need to respect the needs of people coming here seeking safety, the processes in place and the systems that protect their dignity and rights. That is not happening with a lot of young men who are on the canals in Dublin city centre at the moment. We then get into media and public debate and see that this disinformation and fear is driving the media and public debate. That is amplifying polarised views and normalising fears.

I want to go back to the work that I do in communities. The vast majority of communities right across this country are welcoming and engaging and want to support people. However, that is not the dominant narrative in our media. What is coming is the negative about immigration. What we want to do is to balance the shift of what is happening in our communities and not the amplification that the recommender system is delivering to all our devices day in, day out. That is how we look at the cycle of fear.