Social Media and Hate Speech in time of War: The case of Tigray War

Abstract

Hate Speech has been around in Ethiopia before social media, but with very limited reach. With the coming of social media companies that have no or little business interest to lose in low-resourced languages such as those in Ethiopia, diaspora activists that have nothing or little to lose from engaging in online hate speech, and several technical and institutional challanges, hate speech on social media slowly became mainstream in Ethiopia, tearing societies apart and eventually serving as an animating force for a genocidal war on Tigrayans. In this speech, I will briefly assess the normalization of hate speech in Ethiopia, the factors that led to this, and the role hate speech and social media played during the Tigray war, social media hate speech detection and monitoring, and what should be done going forward.