Media and Hate Speech: A Discursive Study of Hate Speech on Nairaland Forum

Abstract

Digital communication has dominated a major space in our everyday discourses; reflecting how we create, organize, conduct, and express our identities in everyday activities. This study entails the discursive study of hate speech on the Nairaland forum. This study is hinged on Van Dijk's Socio-Cognitive theory (2016) and Ruth Wodak's (2009) Discursive Strategies. The data for this study comprises twenty-eight (28) participants' comments extracted from Nairaland. Findings revealed that commenters of hate discourse on Nairaland used five discursive strategies which include nominalization, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, and intensification to produce their hateful comments on the forum. Strategic devices used include nominals, appositions, relative clauses, pronouns, predicative adjectives, metaphors, giving reasons, questioning, and hyperbole. The study also revealed that ethnic, political party, and religious affinities are the major triggers of hate comments on Nairaland. Thus, the study recommended that technology experts should be engaged to design features, using information derived from language experts to block or filter hate comments on social media platforms. Also, standard laws should be established to curb the menace of hate speech on social media platforms in Nigeria.