22nd December 2021
Hate speech could be a threat to the freedom of speech. People, who are the target of online abuse, may be discouraged to participate in public discussions and that, according to Norwegian sociologist Marjan Nadim, Research Professor at The Institute for Social Research, is a problematic tendency.
Marjan Nadim‘s work focuses on gender equality, immigrant integration, and freedom of speech. Together with colleagues, she published reports on the nature and extent of hate speech, regulation of hate speech from the perspectives of freedom of speech and criminal law.
To what extent do Norwegians experience online hate speech?
When we ask people to what extent they face online hate speech the figure is usually approximately between 7 and 10 percent. You could pose a question of whether it is a lot or not. But we never put much emphasis on the figure, we are more concerned about differences between groups. In surveys, there are many factors that affect the figure that you end up with. For instance, the wording of the questions. We don’t know what people put into the concept of hate speech. Unlike in the English-speaking context hate speech isn’t an established term in Norway.
We have also asked people if they observed online hate speech. The figure increased to around 70–80 percent. One conclusion could be that it is very common to observe hate speech and not that common to experience it directly.
What groups, according to your findings, are the most exposed to hate speech?
When being asked if they experienced hate speech women do not say “Yes” more often than men. But when we ask what is the message directed towards, we see that women are being attacked for who they are (for instance their gender) whereas men often report being attacked for their opinion or their political position. Even though men’s experiences are uncomfortable it doesn’t fall under the conventional understanding of hate speech.
We find the same pattern when it comes to ethnic or religious minorities. When being asked if they experienced hate speech they do not necessarily say “Yes” more often. However, the messages are directed towards who they are so it has more adverse consequences for them.
Some groups are clearly underrepresented in our surveys so sometimes it is hard to have precise data about them (for instance, ethnic and religious minorities). But we have quite good documentation of the LGBT community’s experiences. They are clearly more exposed to hate speech than the population in general.
You and your colleagues had a hypothesis that people who received hate speech or negative comments about their identity were discouraged from further participation in public discussions. Where there any evidence to be so?
For us, it was a question of what kind of consequences can hate speech have. So we were interested in whether or not hate speech had a chilling effect on freedom of speech, I mean, whether or not hate speech made people more cautious in expressing their opinions.
A substantial minority of those who said that they had received hate speech, agreed with that statement. It is not that everybody who receives hate speech becomes silent or more careful about expressing their opinions, but some people do. Women, sexual, ethnic, and religious minorities report to a higher degree of experiencing that kind of effect. Hate speech may be particularly scary and harmful to these people, it triggers awareness of how exposed they might be because of belonging to a certain group. For instance, a woman who receives hate speech might interpret a single experience quite differently than a man would because women carry the awareness of what other women are exposed to. And from the perspective of freedom of speech, it is quite problematic. Some groups are systematically scared away from public debates.
Hate is a strong motivator to use hate speech towards someone. What else motivates people to express the hatred towards social groups online?
One type of motivation is ideological or political beliefs. This is not necessarily hate speech towards a social group itself, it is an ideological position that people have when experiencing a strong sense of threat. It is a way to legitimize their aggressive style of debate which could include hate speech and personal attacks. They see themselves in some sort of a war where they are fighting against this great threat and they need to warn others, convince them of this threat. And this logic of debate could be found on either side of the political spectrum. We interviewed people who feel threatened by racism. They fight racists and fascists sometimes using very strong language and hate speech. People who are on the more far-right side of the political spectrum perceive immigrants as a threat and fights immigration that way.
Another motivation for expressing hatred is based in an understanding that one is simply spreading knowledge. This kind of commentators, for instance, those who believe in conspiracy theories, do not recognize their comments as offensive because for them they are “neutral facts”. People believe to be sharing information about the topic even though those “facts” can be considered as hate speech.
The article is a part of the projects “#NoPlace4Hate: Improving Institutional Response to Hate Speech in Lithuania” and „#HATEFREE: Improving the Norway’s and Lithuania’s Bilateral Cooperation in preventing hate speech and mainstreaming equal opportunities”. The “#NoPlace4Hate” is partially funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Commission (Project Agreement No. 875127 — LGKT_HS — REC-AG-2019 / REC-RRAC-RACI-AG-2019). The European Commission is not responsible for any possible usage of this information. The „#HATEFREE“ project is funded by EEA and Norway Grants.