In Brazil, 53% of the population are declared to be black or mixed, and hate speech against race is crime. Nevertheless, virtual racism is the second most reported internet crime. And the numbers won't stop increasing. In the last two years, it has raised 34%.
On July 3rd, 2015, Maria Julia Coutinho, the first black weather presenter on a major Brazilian newscast, received several racist comments on Facebook.
In response to this attack and others targeting black people, we decided to track the location of racist individuals using the geotag data, check-ins, friend data and event activities on their social networks. We then put their comments on billboards near their houses in order to make them face their own attacks and realize how hateful they could sound.
The campaign became a topic conversation worldwide generating more than US$ 5 mi in earned media. The searches related to “virtual racismo” on Google increased 4x. NGO Criola's website reached over 152 countries. And 83% of the offenders deleted their accounts.