Doha to host International Conference on Social Media this month

Over 300 international entities will take part in the International Conference on Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Activists, to be held in Doha from February 16 to 17.

Organized by Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) in conjunction with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the European Parliament, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), the two-day conference seeks to encourage dialogue on the power of social media in advancing human rights as well as explore recurrent forms of interference in the use of social media.

The conference will ascertain good practices of social media use, look into the impact of restrictions to online speech by national policies on activists and social media influencers, among others, in addition to reviewing the negative use of social media in inciting and spreading hate speech.

More than 300 international organizations and think tanks to participate in the International Conference on Social Media that will be held in Doha in February 16-17, and set to be organized by the National Human Rights Committee. #QNA pic.twitter.com/PJuenRLQOp

— Qatar News Agency (@QNAEnglish) February 9, 2020

Several universities, think tanks, journalists’ unions, and distinguished personalities from the European Union countries, officials from the European Parliament, UN agencies, and social media networks will join the event.

More than 40 working papers coupled with various interactive discussion panels as well as four working groups will be featured at the high-level conference, HE the Chairman of NHRC Dr Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri confirmed.

He further mentioned that the conference will see the participation of different countries including Kuwait, Oman, the United States, Russia among other Arab, African, and European countries.  

About 100 local and international media organizations will join the event to highlight the conference’s different activities.

The Opening Plenary session will look at “Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Human Rights Defenders and Professional Contents Creators.”

The other interactive plenary debates at the conference will focus on the themes: creating an enabling environment for online civic space: legal and institutional perspectives; and responses by social media companies to protect civic space.

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