Hate speech on social networks: Is there a hate language construction on social networks?

Details

Supervisors

Cougnon, Louise-Amélie

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue, à finalité spécialisée: langues des affaires

Abstract

Over the last few years, social networks are subject to a surge of abusive and toxic behaviour motivated by hate. Social platforms enable anyone to express themselves freely, encouraging the polarisation and dissemination of hateful content on the web. Digital platforms also have dangerous repercussions in real life, from stigmatisation and denigration of the "other" to hate crimes. This study seeks to analyse the different aspects of online hate and the perception of this phenomenon by users. Many internauts frequently use the word “hate” to describe phenomena such as cyberbullying, trolling, or hater spread on social media. This study combines a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of a corpus of 8,000 tweets that include pejorative terms. It examines the perceptions of hate manifestation and derogatory terms in-depth in responses to an online questionnaire. The results of this study demonstrate the role of language in the creation of prejudice. It also reveals the discourse strategies used to disseminate hate speech on the web. The study adds value on how the Internet shapes new ways of perceiving hate speech and makes it complex to find a universal definition of this recent phenomenon.