The Interaction Between Offensive and Hate Speech on Twitter and Relevant Social Events in Spain

Abstract

Hate speech is one of the major concerns of Europe. Different studies, mainly in English language, have been carried out to analyze hate speech, many of them from a theoretical perspective. Here, it is presented an observational study about hate speech poured on Twitter in Spanish regarding to five social important events: Women´s Day, International LGTBQ+ Pride Day, Spain National Day, national elections, and regional elections. Three different experiments were carried out; two used deep learning algorithms to automatically classify tweets, meanwhile, the latest tweets were classified by a human. Results showed that these events significantly triggered hate speech, yet results differed between experiments, and also depending on the nature of the events. A better understanding of the mechanisms of hate speech propagation can help improve policies in Spain or in countries with similar characteristics, and thus help law enforcement and other institutions to address the scourge of hate crimes.