Hate Speech
The project sought to understand different aspects of sexist discourse against women on the internet in Brazil and India. It sought to understand the different conceptions of hate speech and its implications; perceptions of the phenomenon, how regulatory spheres have been deciding on the issue and how platforms regulate misogynistic hate speech.
Hate speech is a topic that deserved careful attention. The perception that this expression represents something that is growing on social networks, with multiple damages and populations being affected is current. In the same way, this phenomenon challenges the efforts of conceptualizing and fighting.
InternetLab’s initiative on hate speech involves the research of:
- Different conceptions about the outlines of hate speech and its impacts;
- The perceptions of phenomenons recognized as hate speech on the internet, including the ones that contribute to its normalization;
- How different regulatory levels (state, private, and international law) interact with this phenomenon, and how operators of this regulation (from judges to content moderators on internet platforms) have been settling cases.
- In the case of state regulation, which are the gaps and deficiencies of the Brazilian juridical system when dealing with matters of hate speech;
- In private provision, the policies and content control procedures used by the internet platforms, issues in their enforcement, including the purpose of offering feedback to the private sector and, also, the question regarding the automated control of speech through algorithms that have the intention of identifying hate speech manifestations on the internet.
Due to the complexity of the topic, this project comprehends different initiatives. One of them is in partnership with the Indian organization IT for Change, which is financed by the IDRC – International Development Research Center, from Canada. With them, we are developing research on sexist speech (against women) in Brazil and India. The two countries have relevant similarities when it comes to using the internet and their global positions, but also significant social and cultural differences. The project involves several case studies, quantitative research, action research with young people, keeping in mind alternative participation cultures, automatized speech analysis, and counterdiscourses in social networks, legal analysis of the platforms’ terms of use, and the development of reports and reference materials.
Another face of this research area regards hate speech against the LGBT+ community in Brazil. This face encompasses the development of juridical research, case studies, and studies on automated decisions, as well as holding debates and making a transversal sensibilization between sectors.