Hate Speech in Spain Against Aquarius Refugees 2018 in Twitter

Abstract

High-profile events can trigger online hate speech, which in turn modify attitudes and offline behavior towards stigmatized groups. This paper addresses the first path of this process by using manual and computational methods to analyze the complete stream of Twitter messages in Spanish referring the boat Aquarius (N = 24,254) From the rejection of Italy, until the arrival at the Spanish port of Valencia, which was a milestone for the entry of refugees and was highly covered by the media. We found that most of the messages revolved around few topics and were mostly positive, but a significant part of negative messages included hate speech towards refugees and rejection of politicians. Supporting our hypothesis, online hate speech grew after the announcement. The general positive sentiment paradoxically increased, and the language sentiment became less negative. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications, and acknowledge limitations referred to the examined timeframe, suggesting more longitudinal analyses.