A European research project studies hate speech in social networks

People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”
People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”
Research
(22/07/2016)

People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”. This happens mostly around young Muslims, who think that anti-Islamic messages are just another part of their lives. This is one of the conclusions reached by PRISM European project (www.prismproject.eu) (Preventing, redressing, inhibiting hate speech in new media) in which the University of Barcelona participated, together with ten other European entities of the social and research fields from Italy, France, Spain, Romania and United Kingdom. The aim is to analyse the hate speech on the internet and think of strategies to raise awareness on this issue.

People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”
People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”
Research
22/07/2016

People who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think these kind of actions are “normal”. This happens mostly around young Muslims, who think that anti-Islamic messages are just another part of their lives. This is one of the conclusions reached by PRISM European project (www.prismproject.eu) (Preventing, redressing, inhibiting hate speech in new media) in which the University of Barcelona participated, together with ten other European entities of the social and research fields from Italy, France, Spain, Romania and United Kingdom. The aim is to analyse the hate speech on the internet and think of strategies to raise awareness on this issue.

PRISM interviewed 150 young network users and professionals of the fields of justice, security forces or education. There has also been an analysis on the use of social networks by xenophobic and ultra-right-wing groups of the five European countries involved in the project.

Among the reached conclusions, what stands out the most is the silence as a common response from the collectives who suffer from this internet hate speech. This usually happens because people have a permissive attitude towards internet speeches, and sometimes it is due the fear of a certain reaction if they answer back to those insults. Moreover, this attitude is strengthened with the passivity of the social network supervisors when answering complaints. Regarding the latter, in the project there was an experimented in which a lot of comments were reported to Facebook supervisors. The comments had unambiguous incitements to hatred and violence. Nine comments were removed, while the others were considered to have the requirements in order to remain on the social network. There are not police reports, legal petitions or anti-racist organizations. Not even the offensive messages on social networks are answered back because these arguments online are thought to be too “dangerous”. Other conclusions of the study say that there is a lack of standardization of the legislation towards hate speech and a lack of specific training from the people in administration who have to act against these kind of messages. Actually, PRISM included workshops with teachers and social educators as well as police officers and jurists.

In the project they have created a final report for the European institutions and have edited adverts for TV and radio against hate speech. Also, the website of this project, created as a blog and complemented with a Facebook page (PRISM Project) and a Twitter account (@prism_eu), aims to be a reliable point of reference for hate speech.

Apart from the University of Barcelona, where the project is coordinated by the lecturer of social anthropology and Director of the group European Social Research Unit, Olga Jubany, there is also the participation of these entities: the Italian Cultural and Recreational Association, SOS Racismo Gipuzkoa, La Ligue de lʼEnseignement, Race on the Agenda, National office against racial discrimination, the National Research Council, Carta di Roma, Fundatia Dezvoltarea Popoarelor and United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. The group European Social Research Unit has started working on another European project called Divercity. This one aims to analyse homophobia and transphobia in European medium cities, and in Catalonia, they will study specifically cases in Sabadell and Girona. The European Social Research Unit works on the creation of research projects in the fields of social control and exclusion, as well as identity and diversity at a comparative European level. The ESRU belongs to the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Catalonia.