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Description
The aim of the project is to prepare the LGBT+ community in Poland for the 2023 parliamentary elections, in which we anticipate an aggressive election campaign using disinformation. In 2019-2020, a coordinated propaganda campaign targeting LGBT+ people was conducted during three election campaigns. It culminated with the Polish President Andrzej Duda''s statement: "LGBT is not people, it is an ideology". In this project, we prepare the infrastructure and content for communication in support of LBGT+ people during the upcoming elections. We define this communication in two ways. Firstly, as countering disinformation through fact-checking, analysis of political programmes and statements by election candidates. Secondly, as creating a positive narrative that builds a sense of empowerment, civic responsibility and hope among LGBT+ people and their allies. As part of the project, we coordinate task groups'' activities at the regional level, provide experts and prepare the infrastructure and content for a knowledge-based social campaign. We are launching an early detection and response system for new ''anti-LGBT'' campaigns. We are preparing a reliable, non-polarising narrative on LGBT+ rights. We will ensure that such a narrative is present in the media during the election campaign.
Summary of project results
The project combined three areas that create a model developed by our Association to counteract disinformation aimed at the LGBT+ community in Poland. On the one hand, these are communication activities based on “hard” techniques enabling debunking and prebunking based on facts, figures and current scientific knowledge (“defense”), and on the other, “storytelling” messages that amplify the voices of LGBT+ people living in Poland (“story”). A complementary element is the strengthening of the community itself as people who are both the target and - willingly or unwillingly - the audience of disinformation campaigns, by creating self-help content that strengthens the sense of hope, community and agency (“defense”).
Based on the experience of election campaigns conducted by the main political parties in Poland over the past 8 years, which have increasingly come down to manipulation, slander and dehumanization of LGBT+ people in Poland, we have decided to prepare for the election campaign in the fall of 2023 in all of the above areas.
Due to the electoral context, we have adjusted both the messages and content, as well as the methods of operation in such a way as to, on the one hand, allow ourselves to communicate focused on the key topics for our Association, such as marriage equality and equal treatment of rainbow families, and on the other hand, to respond quickly to top-down orchestrated disinformation campaigns.
As part of the preparatory activities, we have improved our competences in the field of hard communication, monitored anti-LGBT+ discourse in social media and updated the list of advocacy postulates in cooperation with 34 LGBT+ organizations from all over Poland ("LGBT+ Congress Declaration").
The main impact of the project became visible after the elections, when the narrative we developed regarding rainbow parenthood was reflected in both the communication and legislative plans of Ministry Katarzyna Kotula and the mainstream media commenting on these activities, and the list of demands we updated became the starting point for talks between LGBT+ organizations from all over Poland with the new ruling coalition and the Minister of Justice Adam Bodnar. Due to the long-term nature of the legislative work and the accompanying public debate on the topic of LGBT+ relationships and parenthood, we expect that the resources, methods and tools developed as part of the project will remain relevant for months and perhaps even years to come.
We have focused our social activities on recruiting, training and activating 3 local activist groups of several people in regions particularly exposed to disinformation. Each group was trained in the field of LGBT+ rights and equipped with our materials, and then organized events for the local community.
We conducted parallel campaigns based on hard and soft techniques in two phases, falling in the period immediately before the elections and in the spring of 2024. Campaign activities included an “electoral information” website focused on monitoring the declarations of politicians on the subject of LGBT+ rights and fact-checking the narratives they reproduced (48 thousand visits), paid-media communication in social media with a cumulative reach of over 1.8 million recipients, outdoor campaigns in 15 cities, as well as the development and distribution of printed materials among 13 organizations and local groups. Work in the area of media relations enabled the campaign to reach 4 mainstream media.
Internally, we conducted a rolling (formative) evaluation of the project team''s work, culminating in an evaluation and integration meeting at the end of the project. The Association''s Board also benefited from several months of supervision, aimed at improving internal communication and team management skills. We also strengthened the facilities - we renovated the office and supplemented the hardware and operational IT resources.
- open recruitment focused on people who do not regularly engage in activist work ended with a group of 11 people present at the stationary meeting in Łódź and another 5 willing to act in their regions. This group included 4 transgender people, i.e. representatives of a group that is cross-excluded and exposed to violence. Despite the varying levels of involvement of individual people, we managed to implement the plan to co-organize 3 local events by the Groups - in each case, these were permanent initiatives that still operate in Lublin, Łódź and Olsztyn;
- planning and budgeting a tool for monitoring social media allowed us to track the evolution of two disinformation campaigns focusing on the topics of transition and the so-called "sexualization of children". The moment of their launch and the way they spread indicate a top-down initiative related to the pre-election activities of right-wing political parties. At the peak of the campaign, the intensity of disinformation did not increase, focusing on other marginalized groups (migrants). Nevertheless, the experience of working in this area (debunking and prebunking) meant that we incorporated this methodology into our current work. The key result from this area is the updated LGBT+ Congress Declaration, i.e. a list of legislative demands of the LGBT+ community in Poland, signed by 32 organizations from all over the country. It is the starting point for talks with the new government, enabling organizations that do not have a developed expert base to conduct advocacy at the local level;
- the validity of campaigns focused on counteracting disinformation was also confirmed by the crisis group established at the initiative of the Batory Foundation in the VI, bringing together social organizations dealing with the issues of education and LGBT+ rights. As part of sharing resources, we provided the gathered organizations with the most important conclusions from social media monitoring and model communication materials in the form of a political brief and FAQ material on transgender. The messages and communications developed in the campaign largely remained relevant after the elections;
The messages, arguments and postulates developed within the project enabled the broader ecosystem of social organizations working for equal rights for the LGBT+ community to present a clear list of needs and legal solutions during the first advocacy meetings with high-ranking state officials (including Minister Katarzyna Kotula and Adam Bodnar). They are already reflected not only in communication, but also in the legislative work of the current government.
Given the long-term nature of social and legal change, we anticipate that the aforementioned communication, human and expert resources gathered in the project will be very useful in the coming months and perhaps even years.