TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards a Definition of Hate Speech
T2 - With a Focus on Online Contexts
AU - Hietanen, Mika
AU - Eddebo, Johan
PY - 2022/10/5
Y1 - 2022/10/5
N2 - As legislators and platforms tackle the challenge of suppressing hate speech online, questions about its definition remain unresolved. In this review we discuss three issues: What are the main challenges encountered when defining hate speech? What alternatives are there for the definition of hate speech? What is the relationship between the nature and scope of the definition and its operationability? By tracing both efforts to regulate and to define hate speech in legal, paralegal, and tech platform contexts, we arrive at four possible modes of definition: teleological,pure consequentialist, formal, and consensus or relativist definitions. We suggest the need for a definition where hate speech encompasses those speech acts that tend towards certain ethically proscribed ends, which are destructive in terms of their consequences, and express certain ideas that are transgressions of specific ethical norms.
AB - As legislators and platforms tackle the challenge of suppressing hate speech online, questions about its definition remain unresolved. In this review we discuss three issues: What are the main challenges encountered when defining hate speech? What alternatives are there for the definition of hate speech? What is the relationship between the nature and scope of the definition and its operationability? By tracing both efforts to regulate and to define hate speech in legal, paralegal, and tech platform contexts, we arrive at four possible modes of definition: teleological,pure consequentialist, formal, and consensus or relativist definitions. We suggest the need for a definition where hate speech encompasses those speech acts that tend towards certain ethically proscribed ends, which are destructive in terms of their consequences, and express certain ideas that are transgressions of specific ethical norms.
KW - hate speech
KW - ethical norms
KW - freedom of speech
KW - social media regulation
KW - hate speech definition
UR - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01968599221124309#supplementary-materials
U2 - 10.1177/01968599221124309
DO - 10.1177/01968599221124309
M3 - Article
SN - 0196-8599
SP - 1
EP - 19
JO - Journal of communication Inquiry
JF - Journal of communication Inquiry
ER -