From development cooperation to digital communication

Delphine's path unfolded by chance, she admits. She studied sociology and development cooperation, once dreamed of becoming a doctor and leaving for the global South with Doctors Without Borders, but realised during an immersion trip that she didn't want to live in Africa for years. She started as an educational officer at an NGO for the right to food, moved to Brussels, and at a next NGO happened into a vacancy for a communications officer. It was the early days of Facebook — when everyone still wondered whether it could be used professionally at all. She was convinced it could, and threw herself into it entirely. She thus lived through the evolution from a civil society that doubted online platforms to a time when they're unavoidable. (She now sees the same debate returning around AI: should we use it, should we pay for it?)

From "hier niet" to a book

The idea for the book dates from June 2024, but its origin lay earlier. Hier niet began some three years ago with a call from a community manager at a major telecoms company, who shared her frustration in a Facebook group for Flemish social media managers about the stream of racist reactions — every time she posted someone wearing a headscarf or of a different skin colour, she already knew what was coming. With around ten engaged, by her own account "very naive" community managers, they built hier-niet.be: a website where you can refer difficult or hateful reactions, with the message that this doesn't belong here, plus tips and tools. Organisations could endorse its charter. It made an impact, but Delphine felt a deeper layer was needed — questions kept coming, such as: how do you tell the difference between hate and an ordinary insult? When the publisher behind a series on communication for non-profit and government asked her, her idea was already waiting.

Momentum and uncertainty

The momentum was there — online hate isn't decreasing, and the theme isn't yet exhausted — and the series offered security: there's a subscription behind it, so the demand was certain. But that very certainty ("people are going to read this") also brought uncertainty ("people are going to read this"). Imposter syndrome held her back at first: she long put off sending her draft versions to her editors, because she wanted it too "finished." When the feedback finally came — from the editors, the board, and the hier niet community who read the manuscript — it proved positive throughout, and that reassured her. That community, with a close-knit core, was her sounding board and first readers.

A practical guide with many voices

Delphine knew early on that it had to be a practical guide with experts and experiential experts — she doesn't have twenty years of experience in community management for large organisations herself, so she wanted to dive deep and hear many voices. She did all the interviews online (efficient, alongside her full-time freelance job), recorded them, used AI for the transcripts, and poured the fragments into her table of contents. The result was, at first, "a monstrosity" full of quotes and notes to self — a kind of ugly first draft she then "sculpted" further. Writing worked best during holiday periods, when everything else falls quiet; her plan to keep Wednesday mornings free failed, because client work always took priority over a project with a later deadline.

How do you not let harsh comments affect you personally?

Besides the hier niet channel, with which you can call the loudest shouters to order, Delphine shares tips from the experiential experts she interviewed: just step outside for a moment, or — like someone with a punching bag in their home office — find a physical outlet. Find a community to talk to like-minded people when it gets too much. And a very practical one: write your reply out fully, completely politically incorrect, and don't publish it — but then it's out of your system.

Who is responsible? The sandwich

Where lies the line between what a social media manager can do and what's a structural problem? Delphine sees it as a sandwich. The platforms themselves — Meta and others — bear a large responsibility: they recognise nude photos at lightning speed, so the techniques exist, but they let hate stand because it generates interaction, reach and therefore revenue. It's part of their business model. In between sits everything: governments, citizens, civil society, companies — all with a role to apply pressure. And as an organisation you bear responsibility for your own page: leave a hate comment standing, and you suddenly give someone with 35 followers a platform among your 3,000.

Polarisation online and offline

The big platforms have built a business model on polarisation, and that polarisation online and offline reinforce each other. Delphine gives the example of how, via Facebook groups — pro- and anti-Islam — a real, physical confrontation could be orchestrated from abroad: you can't pull that off without social media. Social media are an enormous amplifier and accelerator. The distinction between "the online world" and "the real world" is now hard to fully maintain, though differences remain — offline you can give bystander training, while online you don't know who you're dealing with, and you can become the victim of a whole army of trolls.

Keyboard fairies and bridge-builders

Opposite the anonymous "keyboard warriors" stand "keyboard fairies": people who take it upon themselves to respond calmly and informatively. Can you change people's minds online? It's complex. In Bart Brandsma's model this is called the "bridge-builder": someone who tries to make two camps look at each other a little more kindly. The risk is that such a bridge-builder becomes a scapegoat and draws criticism from both sides. When fans take up your cause on your page, you have to keep watching as an organisation to protect those ambassadors.

Regulation, trusted flaggers and the line with censorship

Regulation is needed, but tricky. Europe introduced the Digital Services Act, obliging large platforms to tackle illegal content — but what is illegal content? There's no consensus, and it becomes dangerous if hate speech or "fake news" could be banned at will by those in power (a Putin or Trump deciding what may still be said). Trusted flaggers — NGOs that assess reported content — only tackle a fraction: only what truly crosses the line, real hate speech that incites violence or discrimination against protected groups. That narrow definition Delphine actually finds good, because otherwise you quickly arrive at censorship. Free speech must remain — but free speech is something very different from racism or hate speech.

The role of AI: amplifier and tool

AI worsens the problem: where you once had physical trolls inventing creative hate messages themselves, those are now often bots and AI tools that systematically bombard certain groups or messages. At high volume, you have to ask whether there's even a human behind it. But banning AI entirely makes no sense — the opposition uses it anyway — so we have to "strike back with technology." Just as with the rise of social media, it can go wrong and bring a lot: it can help automate (like the Antwerp company Textgain, which focuses on more extreme cases such as radicalisation), or help a social media manager formulate a more empathetic answer. But then you have to give AI enough context and your tone of voice, because the moment people realise an answer was made by ChatGPT, you lose their trust — people still want to be heard by humans.

Recognising intent: the "heart-venter"

Delphine refers to the typology of the Flemish Peace Institute, which looks at the intent behind a reaction. Someone who posts something rude out of frustration — a "heart-venter" — you shouldn't answer drily or ignore, because then you pour oil on the fire. What such a person mainly needs is the feeling of being heard and understood, even if you don't reach agreement. For that you need human interaction. The book is full of concrete examples in which people, sometimes through humour or by emphasising the real person behind the screen, change their tone or even say thank you.

"Act before you reflect"

What stands out in the book is its action-orientedness — many templates, many concrete tools, generously shared. Delphine embraces the reversal "act before you reflect" (a play on the Dutch saying "reflect before you begin"): you can become fully paralysed by endless research first, while the internet moves on. She deliberately combined framework and action: the Flemish Peace Institute's research sat unread on her computer because it was forty pages — and it's precisely for those who just want to know "what do I do" that she wrote this guide. You don't have to read it from A to Z; look at the question that triggers you, find your practical answer, and dive into the theory afterwards if you like.

An online expert reaching for a book

Wasn't it a contradiction to write about online communication in such a classic, slow medium? Delphine, herself an avid book reader, actually found a book a good medium for more durable advice: it's something that stays, that you can return to, less fleeting than a workshop or a post — it gives body to her advice. She did underestimate beforehand how much she would still have to "sell" the book afterwards through workshops and sessions; she can't expect everyone to study it from A to Z. A book spreads more slowly than a podcast or workshop, but it gives her something to refer to when a one-hour session is too short to tell everything.

The last word

Asked what she'd want to change about how we treat one another online: that people read an article first before reacting to it. There's so much miscommunication through the fleetingness of social media — people instantly get on their high horse, react to a profile photo or a demographic trait. Go a bit slower, read what the other person says, and don't immediately go on the attack. And what she hopes readers take away: that they become more active, even if they apply just one thing — and above all that they draw up their social media rules in calm times, so they have something to hold on to when the storm breaks. Start small, today. To close, Delphine reads a passage from the chapter on self-care, about how that founding call — "can we do something about this together?" — became the starting point of hier niet, and how that group of initiators became a safety net for her. Perhaps, she concludes, the most important form of self-care she can recommend.

De Sh*tstorm Survival Guide by Delphine Van Belleghem was the starting point for this conversation. Don't want to miss an episode? Subscribe to Kom Maar Dichter on your favourite podcast platform, and join The Conversation Layer — and each conversation, transcript and extra reflection will land straight in your inbox.