#DeactivHate: An Educational Experience for Recognizing and Counteracting Online Hate Speech

Abstract

The possibility of raising awareness -especially in young generations-about misbehavior online such as hate speech, could help society to reduce its impact, and thus, its negative consequences. In the last years, the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin has designed various technologies that support educational projects and activities in this perspective. In this paper, we describe the creation of a laboratory called #DeactivHate, specifically designed for secondary school students. The laboratory aims at countering hateful phenomena online and making students aware of technologies that they use on a daily basis. We describe the teaching experience of the first year of life of the laboratory held in different high school classes between April 2021 and March 2022 and the outcomes of the technologies and activities tested. In this extended version of the paper, some sections are especially devoted to observe and analyze the impact of the course on students and their perspective on the laboratory.Warning: This work contains words and expressions that could be considered vulgar or offensive to varying degrees. Some discriminatory expressions are included in our written examples (used in our teaching as samples of real online hate speech). We emphasize that all authors of this paper are deeply involved in activities to counter the spread of online hatred and do not condone the use of such expressions in any way.