Online hate speech on social media in Portugal: extremism or structural racism?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses online racial hate speeches in Portugal. The theory underpinning this research challenges the idea that racism is an epiphenomenon in European and Portuguese history. Beginning with a theoretical framework which conceives racism as a historically constructed system of power and privilege, we argue that its structural nature paved the way for the consolidation and normalisation of openly racist discourses. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that the nature of racist narratives can only be understood from a theoretical conceptualisation which problematises the Portuguese colonial past and its current continuities. In this research, a critical analysis of discourses produced and reproduced on social media, namely Facebook and Twitter, was carried out. From a comparative analysis of the periods before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea that this health crisis coincided with a shift of the dominant racist narratives is thus challenged.