Everyone is witnessing alarming trends in the rise of hate speech that fuels xenophobia, racism, anti-religious hatred and misogyny, as a result of the growth in the use of social media and political discourse, both inside and outside the digital world, which can have devastating effects on its victims and on society. Adolescence is particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of cyber hate, threatening well-being and social cohesion at this stage. It affects identity development, social integration and the creation of social action capacity. Their exposure to excessive and inappropriate use of screens and internet consumption increases this vulnerability, as these environments can be conceived as a virtual playground, where the rules can be relatively blurred and where adolescents have little or no supervision. Despite the scale and relevance of the problem, there is a lack of empirically evaluated programmes based on theoretical frameworks for the prevention of cyber hate among adolescents in educational centres. This is the motivation behind the project Antidote to Cyberhate due to cultural and ethnic prejudice, xenophobia and racism: a prevention programme (ACIBERA) for adolescents aged 12 to 16 in secondary education in Castilla-La Mancha.
The general objectives are:
1. To validate the design of a program to prevent hate speech and victimization (cyberhate) based on cultural and ethnic prejudice, racism, and xenophobia among secondary school students aged 12 to 16 in Castilla-La Mancha, based on an assessment of the educational community's needs.
2. To investigate the short-term effects of the ACIBERA program on preventing cyberhate and victimization among the adolescents participating in the study.
3. To evaluate the implementation of the ACIBERA program, considering the context, participants, materials, and results, and to generate proposals for improvement.
The context consists of seven compulsory secondary education centres in Castilla-La Mancha, including, for example, IES Parque Lineal, IES Don Bosco, IES Alto de los Molinos and IES Tomás Navarro Tomás, in Albacete, taking into account the geographical location, socio-economic level and cultural diversity of the student population. The programme involves prior training for tutors and counsellors, as well as a pilot implementation in the first year of the project. The methodology is mixed, with a quantitative predominance.