Towards a Definition of Hate Speech—With a Focus on Online Contexts

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 sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of communication inquiry Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 440 - 458
Main Authors: Hietanen, Mika, Eddebo, Johan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.10.2023
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
definition
ethical norms
Ethical standards
Ethics
Etik
Filosofi, etik och religion
freedom of speech
Hate speech
Humaniora och konst
Humanities and the Arts
Media and Communication Studies
Media and Communications
Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap
Medie-, kommunikations-, och informationsvetenskaper
Philosophy, Ethics and Religion
Relativism
Samhällsvetenskap
social media regulation
Social Sciences
Speech acts
hate speech definition
ethical norms
social media regulation
hate speech
freedom of speech
ISSN:0196-8599, 1552-4612, 1552-4612
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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. SAGE-Journals-Accessible-Video-Player 10.1177/01968599221124309.M1 sj-vid-1-jci-10.1177_01968599221124309
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SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0196-8599
1552-4612
1552-4612
DOI:10.1177/01968599221124309