Countering Hate Speech on Facebook: The Case of the Roma Minority in Slovakia

Abstract

This article explores hate speech against the Roma in Slovakia on Facebook between April 2016 and January 2017 and the impact of fact-checking and personal experience strategies in countering hate speech through a quasi-experimental research design. It examines how the Roma were constructed and how discussion participants reacted to our pro-Roma interventions. The research sample consisted of 60 Facebook discussions (with more than 7,500 comments) on Roma-related topics posted by the profiles of various members of the Slovak Parliament and the most popular online news media outlets. Qualitative content analysis revealed that the Roma in Facebook discussions were constructed primarily in a negative sense, as asocial criminals misusing welfare benefits. This study demonstrated that Facebook discussion participants presenting anti-Roma attitudes did not use any research evidence to support their constructions. It also demonstrated that pro-Roma comments encouraged other participants with a pro-Roma attitude to become involved.

Racism, Hate Speech, and Social Media: A Systematic Review and Critique

“…Media studies is in general largely Western-centric (Cunningham and Terry 2000; Milan and Treré 2019) and white scholars also dominate within the US and Europe (Chakravartty et al 2018). Our review points towards a grave need for further studies exploring racism outside the US, including discrimination against minorities such as the Roma (see Miškolci et al 2020). There is also a lack of acknowledgement from scholars within the US—particularly quantitative researchers—of leading researchers of colour studying how race, gender, and sex intersect online (see Brock 2012, Nakamura 2008, Noble 2018a).…”

Online Hate Speech: A Survey on Personal Experiences and Exposure Among Adult New Zealanders

“…Evidence shows that more instances of online hate speech occur on social media Keipi et al, 2016;Mondal, Silva, & Benevenuto, 2017). This has attracted attention in exploring online hate on specific social media platforms (see Miškolci, Kováčová, & Rigová, 2018;Williams & Burnap, 2016) and/or using computational methodologies to detect, remove, and understand the dynamics of hateful content distributed through these tools (Mondal et al, 2017).…”

Combatting hate and trolling with love and reason? A qualitative analysis of the discursive antagonisms between organized hate speech and counterspeech online

“…If we accept Mouffe's (2005) premise that political positions need a place where they can be expressed and accepted as legitimate standpoints in order to prevent them from developing into extremist positions, the discussability that this form of organized rule-guided counterspeech promotes is crucial. Moreover, counterspeech can encourage other users with a similar attitude to get involved (Miškolci et al, 2018): Our data shows that comments of fact-bound reasoning and expressions of compassion for the targeted group receive a large number of "likes" and affirmative comments. The crux for assessing the potential of counterspeech to Full Paper transform antagonism into productive agonism thus remains to ask how counter acts are carried out.…”