Chats, narrative!

Chats which are characterized by hateful and anti-democratic content – whether on social media channels, messengers, Discord servers, gaming portals, or in games – and in which groups of people are spoken about in a contemptuous and abusive manner are often upsetting and make us feel helpless. Sometimes we come across undisguised cynicism and malice, at times also mixed with signs of underlying depression and great self-doubt.

For example, on Steam, chat user F posts a picture of a couple watching a movie about Hitler together and complains: “Why can't I find the right woman for this?”, to which user X replies: “Because you're ugly, I guess”, acknowledged by: “Son of a bitch” by F; and finally user P comments: “Because everyone is a whore except mom, is the right answer!”.

Chat users who are solidarity-minded and democratically motivated, and who value respect and fairness, find it difficult to respond to such chats in an appropriate manner without making themselves a target, reaching their emotional limits, and/or being excluded from the chat. Experience shows that professional civic educators often do not fare much better. Moreover, chat users rightly claim their (closed) room as a quasi-private area.

Having a good effect beyond morality and arguments

At the same time, these digital living spaces provide valuable opportunities for effective civic education outreach interventions. However, counter-narratives and argumentative or moralising approaches often fall short. After all, users primarily created these spaces to escape what they call 'social justice warriors' and 'snowflakes'. On the contrary, such pedagogical approaches can even reinforce cynicism about life, politics, and society.

However, valuable support can be obtained from a methodology that is drawn from a new offline approach – the Narrative Dialogue Group approach with pupils in schools. This is a mode of group conversation that is, in principle, friendly, interested, inquiring, tends to be non-argumentative and non-judgemental, but is also prepared to set boundaries and provide cognitive challenges. Narrative dialogue thus triggers intellectual and emotional insights and generates pro-social group dynamics – beyond direct confrontation, moral appeals, and persuasion.

In schools, the interactive methodology used in Narrative Dialogue Groups has also successfully engaged those young people who are difficult to reach and/or have a strong affinity with right-wing extremist attitudes. This success is due to the nature of human storytelling: Those who narrate, i.e., recount firsthand personal experiences, do not despise – neither others nor themselves. After all, even if they only last half a sentence, moments of personal storytelling bring peace.

On-the-spot civic education – through a participatory peer process

The immense potential of the online chat environment is twofold: First, those groups that are caught up in destructive chat cultures can be reached directly in their digital spaces. There, individuals and groups can receive (small) impulses for reflection – and introspection – that encourage them to move beyond their usual patterns of hate speech and self-harming behavior. At the same time, other users who are moderate and human rights-minded but feel helpless can be systematically upskilled and encouraged to favourably and effectively intervene in such chats without resorting to fruitless escalation. This enables them to explore a new and more sustainable mode of political interaction, both online and offline.

Action plan in “Chats, narrative!”

Together with experts from the fields of social media and gaming, as well as practitioners from narrative and relational pedagogical approaches, the “Chats, narrative!” project will identify sustainable forms of chat interventions and dialogical moves that help to stimulate pro-social and human rights attitudes even in toxic chat rooms. To this end, a chat dialog team, in cooperation with a university of applied sciences for social work, will test various forms of dialog in different natural chat groups on several portals.

An analysis of dialogic impact factors and a collection of relevant chat passages, including options for chat communication and first responder dialog options, will be created as a guide for training and further education purposes. Furthermore, a training concept is to be developed, by means of which practitioners will be trained to practice a committed but sensitively dosed “having their say”. The training will be particularly aimed at young people and young adults.

Building on this, an online chat engagement training programme for school pupils will be developed through a peer process, which could then become part of the school’s digital literacy curriculum. This training will encourage, prepare, and support young people to participate proactively and sensibly in online spaces from a dialogical human rights perspective. Advocacy within the social media and gaming industries, as well as with state education ministries, will promote this approach and seek further funding to empirically test it with upper secondary school students, as well as to secure its adoption within educational policy.