Online hate speech
Online hate speech is a type of speech that takes place online with the purpose of attacking a person or a group based on their race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, and/or gender.[1] Online hate speech is not easily defined, but can be recognized by the degrading or dehumanizing function it serves.[2][3]
Multilateral treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) have sought to define its contours. Multi-stakeholders processes (e.g. the Rabat Plan of Action) have tried to bring greater clarity and suggested mechanisms to identify hateful messages. National and regional bodies have sought to promote understandings of the term that are more rooted in local traditions.[3]
The Internet's speed and reach makes it difficult for governments to enforce national legislation in the virtual world. Social media is a private space for public expression, which makes it difficult for regulators. Some of the companies owning these spaces have become more responsive towards tackling the problem of online hate speech.[3]
Definitions[edit]
Hate speech[edit]
The concept of hate speech touches on the clash of freedom of expression and individual, collective, and minority rights, as well as concepts of dignity, liberty, and equality. It is not easily defined but can be recognized by its function.[3]
In national and international legislation, hate speech refers to expressions that advocate incitement to harm, including acts of discrimination, hostility, radicalization, verbal and/or physical violence, based upon the targets' social and/or demographic identity. Hate speech may include, but is not limited to, speech that advocates, threatens, or encourages violent acts. The concept may extend also to expressions that foster a climate of prejudice and intolerance on the assumption that this may fuel targeted discrimination, hostility, and violent attacks. At critical times, such as during political elections, the concept of hate speech may be prone to manipulation; accusations of instigating hate speech may be traded among political opponents or used by those in power to curb dissent and criticism. Hate speech (be it conveyed through text, images, and/or sound) can be identified by approximation through the degrading or dehumanizing functions that it serves.[2][3]
Legal scholar and political theorist Jeremy Waldron argues that hate speech always contains two messages: first, to let members of the out-group feel unwelcome or afraid; and second, to let members of the in-group feel that their hateful beliefs are legitimate.[4]
Characteristics of online hate speech[edit]
The proliferation of hate speech online, observed by the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues poses a new set of challenges.[5] Both social networking platforms and organizations created to combat hate speech have recognized that hateful messages disseminated online are increasingly common and have elicited unprecedented attention to develop adequate responses.[6] According to HateBase, a web-based application that collects instances of hate speech online worldwide, the majority of cases of hate speech target individuals based on ethnicity and nationality, but incitements to hatred focusing on religion and social class have also been on the rise.[7]
While hate speech online is not intrinsically different from similar expressions found offline, there are peculiar challenges unique to online content and its regulation. Those challenges related to its permanence, itinerancy, anonymity and complex cross-jurisdictional character.
Frameworks[edit]
Stormfront Precedent[edit]
In the aftermath of 2014's Islamic terrorism incidents, calls for more restrictive or intrusive measures to contain the Internet's potential to spread hate and violence are common, as if the links between online and offline violence were well known. On the contrary, as the following example indicates, appearances may often be deceiving. Stormfront is considered the first "hate website."[18] Launched in March 1995 by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, it quickly became a popular space for discussing ideas related to Neo-Nazism, White nationalism and White separatism, first in the United States of America and then globally.[19] The forum hosts calls for a racial holy war and incitement to use violence to resist immigration.[19] and is considered a space for recruiting activists and possibly coordinating violent acts.[20] The few studies that have explored the identities of Stormfront actually depict a more complex picture. Rather than seeing it as a space for coordinating actions. Well-known extreme right activists have accused the forum to be just a gathering for "keyboard warriors." One of them for example, as reported by De Koster and Houtman, stated, "I have read quite a few pieces around the forum, and it strikes me that a great fuss is made, whereas little happens. The section activism/politics itself is plainly ridiculous. [...] Not to mention the assemblies where just four people turn up."[21] Even more revealing are some of the responses to these accusations provided by regular members of the website. As one of them argued, "Surely, I am entitled to have an opinion without actively carrying it out. [...] I do not attend demonstrations and I neither join a political party. If this makes me a keyboard warrior, that is all right. I feel good this way. [...] I am not ashamed of it."[21] De Koster and Houtman surveyed only one national chapter of Stormfront and a non-representative sample of users, but answers like those above should at least invite to caution towards hypotheses connecting expressions and actions, even in spaces whose main function is to host extremist views.[3] The Southern Poverty Law Center published a study in 2014 that found users of the site "were allegedly responsible for the murders of nearly 100 people in the preceding five years."[22]
International Principles[edit]
Hate speech is not explicitly mentioned in many international human rights documents and treaties, but it is indirectly called upon by some of the principles related to human dignity and freedom of expression. For example, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was drafted as a response to the atrocities of the World War II, contains the right to equal protection under the law in Article 7, which proclaims that: "All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination."[23] The UDHR also states that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes "freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."[23]
The UDHR was decisive in setting a framework and agenda for human rights protection, but the Declaration is non-binding. A series of binding documents have been subsequently created to offer a more robust protection for freedom of expression and protection against discrimination. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) addresses hate speech and contains the right to freedom of expression in Article 19[23] and the prohibition of advocacy to hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence in Article 20.[23] Other more tailored international legal instruments contain provisions that have repercussions for the definition of hate speech and identification of responses to it, such as: the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ICERD (1969), and, to a lesser extent, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW (1981).[3]
Hate speech and the ICCPR[edit]
The ICCPR is the legal instrument most commonly referred to in debates on hate speech and its regulation, although it does not explicitly use the term "hate speech." Article 19, which is often referred to as part of the "core of the Covenant",[24] provides for the right to freedom of expression. This sets out the right, and it also includes general strictures to which any limitation of the right must conform in order to be legitimate. Article 19 is followed by Article 20 that expressly limits freedom of expression in cases of "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."[25] The decision to include this provision, which can be characterized as embodying a particular conceptualization of hate speech, has been deeply contested. The Human Rights Committee, the United Nations body created by the ICCPR to oversee its implementation, cognizant of the tension, has sought to stress that Article 20 is fully compatible with the right to freedom of expression.[26] In the ICCPR, the right to freedom of expression is not an absolute right. It can legitimately be limited by states under restricted circumstances:
"3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals."[27]
Between Article 19 (3) and Article 20, there is a distinction between optional and obligatory limitations to the right to freedom of expression. Article 19 (3) states that limitations on freedom of expression "may therefore be subject to certain restrictions", as long as they are provided by law and necessary to certain legitimate purposes. Article 20 states that any advocacy of (certain kinds of) hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence "shall be prohibited by law." Despite indications on the gravity of speech offenses that should be prohibited by law under Article 20, there remains complexity.[28] In particular there is a grey area in conceptualizing clear distinctions between (i) expressions of hatred, (ii) expression that advocate hatred, and (iii) hateful speech that specifically constitutes incitement to the practical harms of discrimination, hostility or violence. While states have an obligation to prohibit speech conceived as "advocacy to hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence", as consistent with Article 20 (2),[29] how to interpret such is not clearly defined.[30]
Sources[edit]
This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 IGO (license statement/permission). Text taken from Countering Online Hate Speech, 73, Iginio Gagliardone, Danit Gal, Thiago Alves, Gabriela Martinez, UNESCO. UNESCO.