Hate speech : definitions, interpretations and practices

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing political, academic and social concern about the phenomenon of hate speech, especially in online contexts. This interest has been fueled partly by the apparent connection of hate speech with hate crime, the former being said to precede or accompany the latter (Schabas 2000; Tsesis 2002). In its 2017 annual report, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance observed that rising populism in Europe has encouraged a “rhetoric” that “has blended continuously into an actual or constructed hatred of nonnationals or minorities” (ECRI 2018:8) and underlined the role of social and other media in this process, while in its 2018 annual report, it noted with concern the mainstreaming and normalisation of xenophobic and other prejudicial discourses as well as the negative impacts of fake news and social media echo chambers, where people holding similar views converse (ECRI 2019). Similarly, researchers warn that cyberhate is increasingly becoming a “major presence on popular social media sites” and “shapes nowadays expectations of online discourse” (Citron and Norton 2011:1435), while pointing out that “e-bile no longer oozes only in the darkest digestive folds of the cybersphere but circulates freely through the entire body of the Internet” (Jane 2014: 532). In a more recent paper, Blaya (2019:164) observes how various surveys and studies reporting on the extent of the exposure of young people to hate speech online “confirm the young people’s involvement in online hate, as witness, victims and perpetrators” [Excerpt]