NetHate – Online hate speech in polarised political controversies
How does hate speech emerge in polarised political debates online? And how can it be addressed both preventively and in the aftermath? A sub-project of the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie network NETHATE.
Online and offline hate pose a serious threat to its direct victims and to the social and political fabric of democratic societies. The Network of Excellence for Training on Hate (NETHATE), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme (grant no. 861047), brought together 15 research teams to understand how hate speech emerges, develops and spreads, and to develop strategies for limiting the harm to victims, bystanders and democratic institutions. Each project within NETHATE contributed its own research question. In total, NETHATE comprised 15 early-stage researchers and their supervisors at 10 universities and one non-governmental organisation (NGO), in cooperation with 14 partner organisations including ministries, companies and NGOs.
At the Department of Communication Science at the University of Jena, doctoral researcher Vladimir Bojarskich and Prof. Dr. Tobias Rothmund studied the communicative and psychological dynamics that cause and prevent online hate in polarised political debates. To this end, they
- systematically reviewed existing research on predictors of and interventions against online hate speech,
- experimentally investigated the dynamic causes of online hate – with a particular focus on individuals’ social and ideological characteristics – and
- building on these causes, designed an online intervention and tested its effectiveness (see intervention map).
Further information is available on the NETHATE network website.