On April 15, Senator for Life Liliana Segre was elected president of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Intolerance, Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Incitement to Hate.
This is a commission whose aim is to monitor all forms of hatred and verbal violence – especially online – by protecting victims and improving the digital environment.
We should all ask ourselves: what is hate speech and why we must fight it at all costs.
Hate speech: a definition.
The establishment, strongly supported by the Honorable Segre, of a commission to act as a beacon of light for incidents of violence and verbal discrimination is the latest major step forward for a country aspiring to be more civilized.
What the English call Hate speech , and which we can translate as hate speech , refers to that set of offensive comments, violent content and insults, mainly conveyed through digital platforms.
This is a behavior that concerns everyone: citizens, celebrities, news channels and politicians included.
From a sociological perspective, analyzing online hate requires considering a variety of factors: depending on the context being studied and the social conditions, hate can develop with varying intensity and its forms can vary.
Media and Hate Speech
In general, according to Boccia Artieri (2021), the violent attitude is linked, first of all, to the fact that access to the internet is at the same time widespread but indiscriminate and therefore goes to attack the overall structures of knowledge and coexistence.
For Boccia Artieri, hate speech thus becomes "yet another example of the negative consequences of the internet at its current level of development in itself and in relation to profound transformations of the social structure, as when it refers to the debate on the crisis of democracies."
In fact, the pervasiveness of digital media lies precisely in their free access: from effective intermediation channels they can quickly transform into powerful weapons of discrimination.
This happens not only because everyone, in and with the media, is free to express their opinion, but also because that opinion can be amplified without traditional intermediaries.
Moreover, the internet algorithms themselves often influence the exposure, selection, and dissemination of such content (Online Hate Group, Final Report, 2021).
Forms of Hate Speech: A Research on Hate Speech.
On the occasion of the third annual meeting of Parole O_Stili, SWG conducted a study on hate and falsehood online, comparing data recorded in 2017 and 2018. The results revealed a significant increase (+4%) in the risk of experiencing episodes of hate and verbal violence (bullying, defamation, denigration, etc.): from 11% in 2017 to 14% in 2019.
Internet users are increasingly convinced that online debate is based exclusively on extreme opinions (+5%): from 7% in 2017 to 12% in 2019. In short, for many the web is not so much a terrain for dialogue as a place for conflict.
In this sense, we can interpret the 68% who have now resigned themselves to verbal violence online, considering it our new way of communicating online.
Who are the main ones? victims of hate online?
According to the same research, law enforcement officers are among the groups experiencing an increase, from 6% in 2017 to 9% in 2019. Among other targets, the percentages for homosexuals, entertainment personalities, and people with disabilities remain unchanged. However, the perception that migrants are the ones subjected to violent language has decreased (from 20% in 2017 to 8% in 2019) and women (from 19% in 2017 to 11% in 2019) (paroleostili.it).
How communication is changing.
Beyond individual definitions and categorizations, it seems more useful to analyze hate speech from a communicative perspective, and specifically on the effects that hate speech can have on users of online platforms.
In this sense, many studies have highlighted the negative consequences of hate speech on users' participation in public debate (Bentivegna, Rega 2021).
Violent and offensive tones darken the communication environment, polarize opinions, reinforce stereotypes: in essence, they compromise the discussion itself and jeopardize the effectiveness of mutual exchange.
For all these reasons, the online impact of hate speech goes far beyond the single, albeit serious, attack on a single target, but "undermines the democratic value of discussion and participatory processes, legitimizing,
at the same time, behavioral models based on the culture of discrimination and violence" (Bentivegna, Rega 2021).
Hatred and democratic debate
Although the establishment of the Commission against Hate Speech is the latest in a series of tools that have emerged from various quarters in the fight against online hate (think of the “Manifesto of Non-Hostile Communication” promoted by Parole ostili or the awareness-raising activities of Amnesty International), today the battle against hate speech must deal with an obstacle that appears insurmountable: anonymity.
According to a 2018 L'Espresso study (source: m.espresso.repubblica.it), hate speech is encouraged by the protection afforded by the ability to interact online without revealing one's identity.
Of course, the obstacle is not insurmountable and the police do a fundamental job in this regard, but even today that anonymity reveals all the ambiguities of the internet, which on the one hand shows us that it is a digital public sphere, but on the other constitutes itself as a place whose audience is so anonymous and disembodied that it can hardly be made reliable for democratic debate.
Ruben Ribellino
Bibliographic and web references
- S. Bentivegna, R. Rega, Online hate speech from a communications perspective: an agenda for research, in Mediascapes journal, 16/2020;
- Online Hate Group, Final report, in amministrazione.gov.it, 2021;
- agendadigitale.eu;
- amnesty.it;
- ilfattoquotidiano.it;
- innovazione.gov.it;
- paroleostili.it
