Hate Speech as Part of Contemporary Public Discourse and Possible Solutions to Support Public Administration: European Parliament Elections in Croatia

Abstract

This article deals with hate speech in public discourse and the media, emphasizing the importance of detecting it in a timely manner in order to remove it. This falls within the scope of the tasks of public administration according to the EU’s normative framework because language is one of the main ways that discrimination is enacted. To this end, the empirical research was carried out in two parts. The first part identifies and analyzes unacceptable public behavior (hate speech), defining types of occurrence as opposed to insults and slander, and identifying the advantages and disadvantages of using language technologies for timely identification. The second part of the research detects occurrences of hate speech in Croatian offline media using the example of the 2019 European Parliament elections, drawing attention to a number of methodological obstacles preventing timely identification of hate speech. The results of this investigation contribute to understanding the linguistic-discursive construction of offline and online hate speech in multicultural communities. It is hoped that regulatory authorities will use the results of this research to facilitate implementation of the EU normative framework.