Using Twitter bot to change 'refugee' to 'human being' creates 100 million impressions

Adrien Darwans

The negative news coverage surrounding the Syrian refugees in Europe created social tensions globally. The media has an important impact on the lives of asylum seekers and their level of integration into society. Some argue that the media has dehumanised refugees and created a false crisis.

The agency partnered with PASSOP (People against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty), a community-based, grassroots non-profit organisation devoted to protecting and promoting the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, to bring the campaign to life.

We built a Twitter bot with one simple function, to find tweets that use the word ‘refugee’, replace it with the phrase ‘human being’ and then retweet the revised tweet back to the original Twitter handle that posted the tweet. Thanks to the instant nature of Twitter, we were able to continue the conversation as it happens, while it was top of mind, which makes it impactful and relevant.

While bigotry and prejudice intensify in the self-proclaimed first world and, while voters in the UK would rather sabotage their own future than welcome human diversity, I know that there is nowhere I'd rather be than in South Africa, where it is simply impossible to hide from confronting the advantages and responsibilities that come with having a lighter skin.

As an immigrant (or ‘expatriate’ if you are pale enough to qualify) from Belgium, where we have hardly had to confront or address the consequences of our colonial past, living here has been an incredibly challenging and enlightening journey. The weight of history is omnipresent, from urban demarcations to social networks and, somehow, despite the odds, it feels that solutions may be within reach.

South Africa, because of its unique history, is pressed to redefine human narratives and identities, ahead of the rest of the world. Its youth is taking the challenge head-on through the various intersectional #MustFall movements, relentlessly questioning entrenched and antiquated notions of race, gender or class.

There is nothing new or extraordinary about the technology we used: a relatively ancient platform and a few lines of code. However, that is sort of the point: technology in itself is worthless; its value lies only in the problems it can solve. Someone who I unfortunately cannot recall summed it up better than I ever could, ‘All QR codes point to MySpace. No one noticed yet.’

With more than 100 million impressions and 180,000 mentions to date, the results of PASSOP’s ‘Twitter Refugees’ have so far exceeded our most optimistic expectations.

We do hope that the campaign may contribute in some way to shifting the refugee narrative towards a more humane space. It was certainly a rewarding experience, if only to witness bigots foaming at the mouth, while arguing with a Twitter bot.

Working on this campaign, witnessing the constant outpouring of fear fuelled hatred directed at ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’, confirmed how privileged and shielded from reality the likes of me are. For white heterosexual males, most doors tend to open effortlessly. We do not need to sneak in or wear a mask. Countries, job interviews and public spaces are available and welcoming to us because we are simply assumed to be competent, decent, human beings

The campaign is still alive and well. You can see it on Twitter under the #HumanCrisis hashtag.

Strangely enough, while writing this post, I was toying around with some machine learning driven text generation and, after being fed some pretty random pieces of writing (including my nemesis Deepak Chopra), the algorithm spat out something of an oddly relevant omen:

‘Whatever is stored in darkness and those who turn to it, that system seems real, workable, reliable, and sent him a check. I've never been a culture based upon these vile thoughts and will receive a message to share, this is the time to give.’