By Stephen Jackson

From supporting a local museum to responding to climate change to aiding people in the midst of a health crisis, nonprofit staff turn time and attention to a variety of issues, working on them in creative and hyperlocal ways. They also play a critical role in holding open spaces where individuals can gather and respond to issues in their communities, and much of this takes place online. 

These spaces are the backbone of our democratic right to free association, and they are increasingly under threat.

Through sophisticated disinformation campaigns, bad actors seek to erode the trust that nonprofits have spent years building around their causes and communities. Small but extremely loud groups and individuals are increasingly harassing others online with the aim to make these spaces feel unsafe. Malicious entities steal sensitive data held by nonprofits about their constituents and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities to launch attacks against their supporters and partners. 

The concept of trust and safety (T&S) has emerged in recent years as a framework for safely engaging on the internet. It provides a way of thinking about building policies, procedures, and structures in online spaces. It allows people to interact with others without fear of online harassment or bullying, to share information with fear that it will be stolen or misused, to visit websites and use apps that are free from scams and malware, and to access information that is factual. 

Here’s how The Atlantic Council puts it:

“Rooted in the U.S. technology sector, trust and safety emerged in the past fifteen years as a term to describe the teams and operations working to mitigate the harm (to users or others) arising from an online product or platform. This includes the use or misuse of the product, as well as negative interactions enabled, fostered, or intensified by the product’s features that diminish trust among users of a product, or between users and the company offering the product.” — Scaling Trust on the Web Annex 1: Trust and Safety (Atlantic Council.org)

Nonprofit leaders have an opportunity to adopt a T&S framework to foster safe spaces for engagement, to counter misinformation, protect our beneficiaries, and to develop standard cybersecurity practices. All of this will at the same time serve the broader goal of ensuring that our democratic right to free association remains intact. 

Fostering Safe Spaces for Supporter Engagement

It is incumbent on nonprofit leaders to ensure the platforms used to engage stakeholders provide for safe and inclusive interaction. This means that there should be moderation guidelines, as well as clear processes for addressing hateful and extremist behavior online. It also means steering clear of those platforms that do not provide adequate protection for their community members. 

Countering Disinformation and Protecting Beneficiaries 

Disinformation creates a harmful frame through which people view new information. This can engender public cynicism and directly impact those organizations trying to support their community members.

To build and maintain trust in their communities, organization leaders must combat disinformation directed at the organization, as well as false narratives regarding the issues worked on.

Both disinformation and misinformation fuel societal polarization, which leads to democratic backsliding. Those with low levels of media literacy are often more vulnerable to information disorders and lack effective means to navigate and counter them. Fact-checking is not enough. Everyone needs to make continued investments in strengthening the capacity of individuals and civil society alike to ensure they have the digital skills, knowledge and resilience to understand and fight disinformation. 

TechSoup’s HiveMind program provides support for sharing counter narratives and identifying disinformation and misinformation. Corporate leaders must be involved, such as at HootSuite which teamed up with large nonprofits such as the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide staff with the social media skills and training needed to combat the onslaught of misinformation that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Nonprofits staff face difficulties in constructing persuasive narratives, effectively utilizing digital media channels, and mastering crisis communication during direct attacks on their organizations or target audiences. These obstacles hinder their ability to convey messages convincingly and engage the public and stakeholders consistently. Managers need to take this seriously and look for ways to combat it not only by countering disinformation and misinformation, but also by creating powerful positive narratives. 

Implementing Standard Security Practices 

All of this needs to be done in concert with standard cybersecurity practices. Organizations such as the CyberPeace Institute, the Global Cyber Alliance, and others are providing direct support to increase the security posture of nonprofits everywhere. These practices help to protect the integrity of an organization’s data, the safety of their stakeholders, including beneficiaries and donors, and the online relationships with linked systems, such as institutional funders. 

These standard practices, including regular software updates to accommodate the changing array of threats and the tools to combat them, need to be consistently implemented across all nonprofits to a reasonable degree.

Ensuring The Right To Free Association Online

Digital threats today go beyond taking control of systems with ransomware or extracting personal data through spear phishing campaigns. Coordinated cyberbullying and disinformation campaigns can create an online environment that can make it difficult if not impossible for organizations to engage their communities in meaningful collaborative work and change. T&S provides a broader way for nonprofits to think about securing their interactions, relationships, and data while operating in a complex, yet crucial online environment.

The ability of people to engage on the internet is often talked about as one of free speech. It is, importantly, also the right of free association. Can we gather with others like us in safety? Can we talk about the issues important to us? When attacked, do we know how to remediate those attacks? 

Adopting a T&S framework supports all of the above, while paving the way for a better internet in which we can all feel safe as we solve the world’s toughest problems. 

AI Disclaimer: This article was written with assistance from Gemini. This includes developing a structure and finding relevant resources for the article.  The prompts and ideas for the article are from the human authors.

***

Stephen Jackson is director, strategic communications at TechSoup. His email is sjackson@techsoup.org

The post Ensuring The Right To Free Association Online appeared first on The NonProfit Times.

Source From Non Profit Times