Unpacking online hate speech in Portuguese social media: a social-psychological and linguistic-discursive approach

Abstract

Building on social psychology and language sciences, this research identified core social psychological, and linguistic-discursive features of online hate speech targeting racialized, migrant and LGBTI+ communities in two social media platforms in Portugal: YouTube, and Twitter/X. The research was based on the analysis of two annotated corpora comprising 24,739 YouTube comments and associated replies, and 29,758 contextualized tweets retrieved from 2775 conversations. Overall, the results, based on the detailed annotation framework developed in this study, revealed that i) online hate speech was mainly expressed in subtle ways (i.e., indirect hate speech); ii) the main underlying process of discrimination in both direct and indirect hate speech was outgroup derogation; iii) stereotypes, threats, and dehumanization were frequently used as discursive strategies to express online hate speech; iv) specific features, like emotions, often overlooked in hate speech annotated corpora, varied in their expression depending on the specific target community; v) the use of some discursive strategies, such as realistic and symbolic threats, seem to be dependent not only on the target community but also the social media platform; vi) discursive strategies and emotions mobilized in hate speech were correlated with specific rhetorical devices and fallacies. These findings provide valuable insights into the complex landscape of online hate speech and highlight the importance of interdisciplinary, context and culturally sensitive approaches in understanding this phenomenon.