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Hate speech
[collection article]
This document is a part of the following document:
Challenges and perspectives of hate speech research
Abstract Hate speech - communication that attacks a person or a group on the basis of identity factors, such as gender, race, or religion - is one of the main digital threats to democracy. Hate speech has manifold, empirically evidenced consequences for targeted individuals and groups experiencing systematic... view more
Hate speech - communication that attacks a person or a group on the basis of identity factors, such as gender, race, or religion - is one of the main digital threats to democracy. Hate speech has manifold, empirically evidenced consequences for targeted individuals and groups experiencing systematic discrimination and for social cohesion as a whole. Yet, while the upheaval of social media has put the concept in the spotlight, such attention has also structurally transformed its meaning, turning hate speech from a concept with clear defining properties into a family resemblance comprising all kinds of online abuse. This process is far from causing only academic issues. It also sidesteps historical oppression as a defining property and as the reason for which one is targeted by hate speech. Thus, the process has been belittling public animosity against historically oppressed groups, reducing hate speech merely to a matter of offensive language on social media. This chapter shows how and why this conceptual change has taken place and the consequences it unleashes. It specifically addresses the problems of concept stretching, concept shrinking, and the inflation of concepts. Finally, it concludes that such conceptual issues jeopardize the potential that digital media research on hate speech has to provide guidance to a broad range of social actors.... view less
Keywords
concept; hate; language; discrimination; social media; online media
Classification
Sociology of Communication, Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics
Free Keywords
hate speech
Collection Title
Challenges and perspectives of hate speech research
Editor
Strippel, Christian; Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Emmer, Martin; Trebbe, Joachim
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
City
Berlin
Page/Pages
p. 143-163
Series
Digital Communication Research, 12
ISSN
2198-7610
ISBN
978-3-945681-12-1
Status
Primary Publication; peer reviewed