The Digital Sanctuary: Forging Legal And Ethical Frameworks For Interfaith Coexistence Online

This study aims to explore the balance between hate speech legislation and the principle of freedom of expression. It seeks to understand the perspectives of various stakeholders on the effectiveness of current legal frameworks, the societal impact of hate speech, the challenges faced by digital platforms in moderating content, and the responses of legislative and policy measures to address these issues. Employing a qualitative research design, this study collected data through semi-structured interviews with 24 participants, including legal experts, activists, victims of hate speech, and representatives from social media platforms. Theoretical saturation guided the data collection process, ensuring a comprehensive exploration of the subject matter. Thematic analysis was utilized to identify patterns and themes within the data, with a focus on understanding the nuanced perspectives on hate speech legislation and freedom of expression. Four main themes were identified: Legal Frameworks, Societal Impact, Digital Platforms, and Legislative and Policy Responses. Under Legal Frameworks, categories such as Constitutionality, Hate Speech Legislation, Regulatory Bodies, and Legal Challenges were discussed. Societal Impact was analyzed through Public Perception, Victim Impact, and Community Relations. Digital Platforms encompassed Moderation Policies, Enforcement Challenges, Platform Accountability, User Behavior, and Impact on Public Discourse. Legislative and Policy Responses included Policy Development, Education and Awareness, Support Systems for Victims, Monitoring and Evaluation, and International Cooperation. The findings highlight the complexity of regulating hate speech while preserving freedom of expression and the need for nuanced, multi-faceted approaches. The study concludes that navigating the balance between hate speech legislation and freedom of expression requires a nuanced approach that considers legal, societal, technological, and educational perspectives. Effective hate speech regulation must protect individuals and communities from harm while respecting the fundamental right to free speech. Collaborative efforts across stakeholders and continuous refinement of policies are essential in addressing the evolving challenges posed by hate speech in digital and physical spaces.

This paper addresses the significant issue of hate and violent speech, a phenomenon that has permeated various aspects of social life, including education, politics, religion, and the media. The media, with its broad reach and influence, has become one of the most powerful tools for spreading hate speech. This paper examines international legal and procedural efforts, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Commission’s conventions against hate speech and racism, aimed at reducing hate-driven divisions, sectarian rhetoric, and the risks posed to national and international communities, especially to migrant populations in host countries.

Hate speech on social media is an increasingly widespread phenomenon in line with the expansion of freedom of expression in digital spaces, particularly targeting public figures who are under public scrutiny due to personal issues. However, studies that specifically analyze this phenomenon using a forensic linguistics approach in the context of Instagram comment sections remain limited. This study aims to examine indications of hate speech produced by netizens in the comment section of the Instagram account of actor Teuku Ryan by employing a forensic linguistics approach. The research used a qualitative approach with a descriptive-analytical method, with data sources consisting of netizen comments on Teuku Ryan’s Instagram post published on 30 April 2024 and collected in May 2024. Data were obtained using observation and note-taking techniques, then analyzed based on the types of hate speech and the linguistic units through which they were expressed. The findings reveal 119 instances of hate speech divided into four types, namely insults, defamation, blasphemy, and incitement, with insulting expressions as the most dominant category. In terms of linguistic units, hate speech was most frequently realized in the form of sentences rather than words and phrases, indicating a tendency among netizens to express hate speech explicitly and directly. These findings affirm that a forensic linguistics approach is relevant and effective for identifying and analyzing hate speech objectively on the basis of linguistic evidence within legal and social contexts, and can serve as a reference for efforts to address and prevent hate speech offenses in digital spaces.

The transformation towards society 5.0 is often characterized by people's behavior in digital public spaces causing widespread public unrest. This qualitative study aims to highlight, explore, and analyze the social character of people on social media who are less tolerant and caring. This study relies on secondary data from literature studies and online news. The finding is that there is a phenomenon of weakness in the social character of individuals and communities who tend to be intolerant and uncaring in digital public spaces. The habit of posting content or creating statuses that are abusive, threatening, intimidating, and behavior that spreads hoax news, hate speech, and flexing. Weak social character has implications for people's habits of spreading news too quickly without caring about other people. Apart from that, the digital technology revolution brings a sense of comfort and entertainment, and anyone can express themselves on social media. Unfortunately, technological progress is not accompanied by the development of critical-analytical thinking skills. As a result, individual society behavior is too responsive-reactive in the digital space without thinking about the further impacts that might arise. This has had negative implications for social cohesion and relations and even legal issues. This study recommends strengthening social character with strategies for strengthening individual critical-analytical thinking abilities through education at school. It is hoped that individuals who have been coached, trained, and accustomed to being tolerant and caring at school can become citizens of society 5.0 who are wise in using social media. In this way, it is hoped that a high level of tolerant and socially caring character will be realized so that the ideals of a prosperous, civilized, and progressive society 5.0 will become a reality.

The article examines the role of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in countering hate speech in the digital environment amid growing digitalization and the rapid transformation of online communication. Hate speech disseminated through social networks, online media, and digital platforms poses increasing risks to human rights, democratic stability, and information security, especially in the context of the ongoing armed conflict, where hostile narratives and manipulative technologies amplify intolerance and societal polarization. The study highlights that despite existing anti-discrimination norms, Ukraine lacks a coherent legal definition of hate speech and a consistent enforcement framework, which significantly limits the effectiveness of preventive and protective mechanisms. European standards – particularly Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16, General Policy Recommendation No. 15, and the Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online within the Digital Services Act – underline the need for systematic monitoring, rapid platform response, and educational initiatives. The article assesses the current powers and activities of the Commissioner, including monitoring of digital media, cooperation with state bodies and online platforms, initiating legal actions, and conducting awareness-raising campaigns in partnership with civil society and international organizations. Special attention is given to challenges in distinguishing between freedom of expression and discriminatory rhetoric, the complexity of online content moderation, and the lack of detailed statistical reporting on manifestations of hate speech. The study argues for strengthening the institutional capacity of the Commissioner through enhanced monitoring tools, clearer legislative definitions, cooperation with digital platforms, and integration of European standards to improve the national system of preventing, detecting, and responding to hate speech in the digital sphere, as well as developing coordinated analytical mechanisms to support evidence-based policymaking.

This article aims to provide the relevant parameters of the phenomena of antigypsyism, online hate speech, and their connection. The parameters serve as background for finding out about the trends in online hate speech directed at the Roma community, the most important concepts and tropes regarding antigypsyism, and the relevant trends in antigypsyist online hate speech. The article will focus on the European Union context because it provides a comparative political and legal framework and possibilities of joint activities and policies to tackle Roma discrimination. By combining scholarly resources and governmental reports, monitoring and reporting collected through nongovernmental organizations, it is concluded that the phenomenon of online antigypsyism is getting stronger. It mirrors offline hate speech and is relatively poorly monitored. It is spread via all mainstream social media platforms whose record on its removal tends to oscillate. A brief section is dedicated to intersectional aspects of antigypsyist hate speech whose iterations in the digital space are under-researched.

Reviewed by: Hate Speech in Japan: The Possibility of a Non-Regulatory Approach ed. by Shinji Higaki and Yuji Nasu Celeste L. Arrington (bio) Hate Speech in Japan: The Possibility of a Non-Regulatory Approach. Edited by Shinji Higaki and Yuji Nasu. Cambridge University Press, 2021. xviii, 506 pages. $125.00, cloth; $100.00, E-book. Hate Speech in Japan is an information-packed new book about a significant recent development in Japanese society: hate speech. Public demonstrations [End Page 435] and online comments against ethnic Korean residents of Japan (zainichi Koreans) attracted media attention within Japan and worldwide a decade ago and spurred international criticism. Particularly shocking was the targeting of a Korean primary school in Kyoto by the Zaitokukai (Zainichi Tokken o Yurusanai Shimin no Kai, or Citizens Association against Special Privileges for Resident Koreans). This book analyzes such hate speech and its relationship to older forms of discrimination against Japan's Korean and outcaste (burakumin) communities. It also details and assesses the diverse recent efforts to address the problem of hate speech, including via new national legislation, subnational government ordinances and guidelines, administrative measures, and court rulings. Through both formal legal analysis and nuanced examinations of policy implementation, this book's 20 chapters significantly advance scholarship about regulatory styles, law and social change, and the balance between freedom of expression and the right to human dignity in Japan. The term "hate speech" (heito supiichi) gained currency in Japan in the early 2010s, and new legislation to address the problem was enacted within just a few years. The 2016 Hate Speech Elimination Act (HSEA) defines hate speech as "unfair discriminatory speech and behavior against persons originating from outside Japan" or "their descendants who are lawfully residing in Japan." This narrow definition reflects what Erin Chung has called "rights hierarchies" in the South Korean context; noncitizens have different human rights protections depending on their visa category.1 And it excludes Japanese minorities like burakumin, Ainu, and Okinawans (for political debates about the definition, see pp. 233–36). Many of this book's contributors document discrimination against burakumin and zainichi Koreans long before the term "hate speech" began circulating and grapple with why zainichi Koreans were targeted most recently (chapter 16). This volume is empirically rich, drawing on formal legal analyses, comparisons of legal scholars' arguments, media and online content analyses, and interviews. For example, chapter 12 uses interview quotes to expose the traumatic impacts of hate speech on members of Kyoto's Korean community. And the social psychological discussion of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes illuminates phenomena adjacent to hate speech and the hateful Internet content analyzed in chapter 17. Despite such evidence, the Japanese government reported to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as recently as 2013 that it "does not believe that, in present-day Japan, racist thoughts are disseminated and racial discrimination is incited to the extent that … legislation to impose punishment … [End Page 436] should be considered even at the risk of unduly stifling legitimate speech" (p. 66, note 30). Indeed, Japan long resisted regulating discriminatory speech, which led some of this book's contributors to worry that Japanese people were unaware of hate speech until the Zaitokukai demonstrations (pp. 222, 239–40). This volume persuasively documents, in a great service to scholars without Japanese-language abilities, one reason for the lack of hate speech regulations: Japanese legal scholars tended to privilege freedom of expression, usually citing the U.S. model rather than the German approach, which emphasizes human dignity (chapters 1 and 15, pp. 242–43, 415–21). Part 2 of the volume (chapters 7–9) details how few legal tools existed for addressing hate speech and racial discrimination in Japan. Criminal and civil claims can be made regarding defamation or insult, but such speech must be targeted against specific individuals or organizations. Since hate speech generally targets broader categories of people, it falls outside existing criminal and tort frameworks in Japan. The book's contributors conclude that it is unlikely that Japanese courts will recognize racist speech and discrimination as a new type of tort anytime soon (p. 204). Ryangok Ku summarizes the weaknesses of Japan's legal and institutional frameworks...

Background: The crime of disseminating hate speech is considered amongst the most prominent crimes in this era, particularly with the rapid technological advancements witnessed globally, which have contributed to its emergence across all communities. Given its seriousness, this crime threatens societal stability and security. In a bid to foster a culture of global tolerance and encounter the various manifestations of discrimination and racism, the Emirati legislator enshrined criminal protection for individuals against discrimination and hate speech based on ethnicity, race and religion. This legal safeguard is articulated in Federal Law No. 34 of 2023 concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism. Moreover, the Federal Decree-Law No. 34 of 2021, which addresses Combating Rumors and Cybercrimes, further reinforces this legal framework, specifically targeting the spread of such offences through digital channels. This addition underscores the UAE’s comprehensive approach to addressing hate speech and discrimination, acknowledging the evolving nature of these crimes in an increasingly connected world. Methods: The research aims to explore the effectiveness of Emirati law in combating discrimination and hate speech crimes through a multi-method approach, which includes a comparative dimension. Firstly, we conducted a comprehensive literature review of existing legal texts and scholarly articles to understand the broader legal context and historical perspectives on these crimes. This review extended beyond Emirati legal sources to encompass international legal standards and comparative legal analyses, allowing us to contextualise the Emirati legal framework within a global perspective. Results and Conclusions: Our study has provided a detailed examination of the complexities and challenges in addressing the crimes of disseminating and promoting discrimination and hate speech within the UAE legal framework. We have identified that these crimes are inherently complex, requiring a specific intent to provoke violence and discrimination. Our analysis reveals a gap in the current legal approach, particularly in addressing the full scope of hate crimes and the nuances of criminal intent. In light of these findings, we have proposed several critical amendments to the UAE law combating discrimination and hate speech. These include refining the definitions and scope of discrimination in Article 1, incorporating "motive for hate" as a key element in Article 4, revising Article 10 to focus on general criminal intention, and enhancing penalties in Article 16 when foreign financial support is involved. These recommendations aim to strengthen the legal framework, making it more comprehensive and effective in combating discrimination and hate speech, thereby safeguarding social security and human rights. This research contributes significantly to understanding hate speech and discrimination crimes in the UAE and offers practical solutions for legal reform. It underscores the need for continuous evaluation and adaptation of laws to address evolving social challenges effectively.

Objectives: This study examines the stance of both the Holy Qur’an and legal legislations on hate speech. It explores Qur’anic verses that reject hate speech and violence while promoting tolerance and peaceful coexistence. The study also analyzes legal provisions addressing hate speech. Methods: The research employs an inductive approach to identify relevant Qur’anic verses and legal provisions, followed by an analytical approach that examines interpretations of these verses and evaluates legal frameworks combating hate speech. Results: The study finds that hate speech is an unethical practice condemned by the Holy Qur’an, which establishes principles for peaceful human interaction regardless of differences in race, language, or appearance. While legal systems address hate speech, they still require stricter regulations to criminalize such rhetoric effectively. Conclusions: Societies must actively combat hate speech through all available means. Strengthening legal measures and promoting the ethical guidelines set by the Qur’an can contribute to reducing hate speech and fostering social harmony.

This study analyzes how gender bias and religious conservatism are reproduced through social media in Indonesia, using the viral case study of Shuniyya Ruhama, a female religious teacher who was attacked online for expressing religious views that were considered incompatible with conservative interpretations. The objective of this study is to uncover the dynamics of the representation of female religious authority and resistance to it in the digital space. The methodology employed is Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), utilizing data from the platforms X (Twitter), Threads, and TikTok, using a purposive sampling technique. Findings indicate that women who deliver religious sermons often face delegitimization through misogynistic religious narratives that reinforce the hegemony of religious patriarchy. Symbolic representations in the form of labeling, hate speech, and the removal of women’s religious authority status reveal unequal power dynamics. On the other hand, counter-narratives emerge from progressive communities advocating for equality in religious interpretation and women’s religious authority. This study shows that social media is not neutral, but rather an ideological arena where conservative discourse is both perpetuated and challenged. The implications of this study include the need for a reformulation of gender-fair media representation and support for digital public spaces that are inclusive of women in religious discourse.

Online hate speech is ripping Ethiopian society apart and threatening the values of democracy, human dignity, and peaceful coexistence. The current study argues that understanding people's responses to hateful posts helps combat hate speech online. Therefore, this study aims to comprehend the roles social media users play in responding to online hate speech. To this end, 14 ethnic-based hate speech posts each with more than 1,000 comments were collected from the public space of four purposefully selected YouTube news channels and four Facebook accounts, which are considered as hot spots for the circulation of hate speech during data collection period. Then, 100 random comments were collected from each hate speech post using “exportcomment.com” which automatically extract comments from social media posts in excel format. After extracting a total of 1,400 random comments, 460 of them were removed because they were found irrelevant and unclear to be coded and analyzed. Then, inductive coding was employed to identify, refine, and name codes and themes that describe the main roles played by social media users in reacting to the hate speeches. The findings showed five major roles social media users play in responding to hatful contents: trolling, pace-making, peace-making, informing, and guarding. The paper discusses the findings and provides recommendations deemed necessary to counter online hate speeches.

The proliferation of online platforms has facilitated global communication but has also led to a concerning rise in hate speech across digital spaces. This research addresses the critical challenge of detecting hate speech in Banglish, a blend of Bangla and English, which presents unique linguistic and cultural complexities. We propose a comprehensive approach leveraging machine learning techniques to identify and mitigate hate speech in this bilingual context. Our methodology involves data collection, prepossessing, feature extraction, and the evaluation of multiple machine learning models, including SVM, KNN, Naive Bayes, Decision Trees, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, AdaBoost, Bagging, Extra Trees, Gradient Boosting, XGBoost, and QDA. The dataset, meticulously curated to capture Banglish nuances, was balanced using Random Over Sampler to address class imbalance. Among the evaluated models, Naive Bayes emerged as the top performer, achieving an accuracy of 78.33%, precision of 81.95%, recall of 74.40%, F1 score of 77.88%, specificity of 82.51%, and an AUC-ROC score of 86.18%. The study highlights the effectiveness of traditional machine learning models in handling high-dimensional sparse data and provides a foundation for developing robust moderation tools to foster safer digital environments for Banglish-speaking communities. The research not only bridges a linguistic gap in hate speech detection but also contributes to broader efforts in combating online hate speech across diverse linguistic contexts.

In the postdigital age, educational institutions are increasingly called to prevent and address hate speech. The Council of Europe’s Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16 stresses the importance of countering forms of incitement that, although they are not illegal, threaten social cohesion, and democratic values. Teachers and educators must respond to both the polarization behind hate speech and the spread of misinformation in post-truth contexts. The different forms of hate on social media often share common psychological and social dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is essential for developing an educational approach that is realistic and culturally aware. Media education must combine critical thinking with a sense of responsibility—encouraging learners to reflect on the consequences of their actions in digital spaces. This chapter situates hate speech within debates on technological neutrality, balancing between instrumentalist and determinist perspectives. In the chapter, hate speech is defined as a “useful but ambiguous” concept, it is explored how digital environments enable its diffusion, and it is examined how the new informational regime transforms racist discourse. Ultimately, hate speech is reframed as a media-educational issue, to be addressed through the lens of “Onlife Citizenship” and the active role of prosumers.

Information and communication technologies hold immense potential to enhance our lives and societal well-being. However, digital spaces have also emerged as a fertile ground for fake news campaigns and hate speech, aggravating polarization and posing a threat to societal harmony. Despite the fact that this dark side is acknowledged in the literature, the complexity of polarization as a phenomenon coupled with the socio-technical nature of fake news necessitates a novel approach to unravel its intricacies. In light of this sophistication, the current study employs complexity theory and a configurational approach to investigate the impact of diverse disinformation campaigns and hate speech in polarizing societies across 177 countries through a cross-country investigation. The results demonstrate the definitive role of disinformation and hate speech in polarizing societies. The findings also offer a balanced perspective on internet censorship and social media monitoring as necessary evils to combat the disinformation menace and control polarization, but suggest that such efforts may lend support to a milieu of hate speech that fuels polarization. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Hate speech is a contextual phenomenon. What offends or inflames in one context may differ from what incites violence in a different time, place, and cultural landscape. Theories of hate speech, especially Susan Benesch’s concept of “dangerous speech” (hateful speech that incites violence), have focused on the factors that cut across these paradigms. However, the existing scholarship is narrowly focused on situations of mass violence or societal unrest in America or Europe. This paper discusses how online hate speech may operate differently in a postcolonial context. While hate speech impacts all societies, the global South—Africa in particular—has been sorely understudied. I posit that in postcolonial circumstances, the interaction of multiple cultural contexts and social meanings form concurrent layers of interpretation that are often inaccessible to outsiders. This study expands the concept of online harms by examining the political, social, and cultural dimensions of data-intensive technologies. The paper’s theories are informed by fieldwork that local partners and I conducted in Kasese, Uganda in 2019–2020, focusing on social unrest and lethal violence in the region following the 2016 elections. The research, completed with assistance from the Berkeley Human Rights Clinic, included examining the background and circumstances of the conflict; investigating social media’s role in the conflict; designing a curriculum around hate speech and disinformation for Ugandan audiences; creating a community-sourced lexicon of hateful terms; and incorporating community-based feedback on proposed strategies for mitigating hate speech and disinformation. I begin this with a literature review of legal theory around hate speech, with a particular focus on Africa, and then turn to the legal context around hate speech and social media use in Uganda, examining how the social media landscape fueled past conflicts. Then I explain my Kasese fieldwork and the study’s methodology, before describing initial results. I follow with a discussion of applications to industry, specifically how hate speech is defined and treated by Meta’s Facebook, the dominant social media provider in Kasese. It progresses to a discussion of the implications of the study results and legal and policy recommendations for technology companies stemming from these findings. Importantly, I apply the research findings to expand existing scholarship by proposing a new sixth “hallmark of dangerous speech” to augment Benesch’s paradigm. Adding “calls for geographic exclusion” as a new qualifier for dangerous speech stems from the particular characteristics embodied by postcolonial hate speech. Examples from the Kasese study illustrate how this phenomenon upends platforms’ expectations of hate speech—which may not consider “Coca-Cola bottle” to be an epithet. The application of this new hallmark will create a more inclusive understanding of hate speech in localized contexts. This paper’s conclusions and questions may challenge platforms that must address hate speech and content moderation at a global scope and scale. It will examine the prevalence and role of social media platforms in Africa, and how these platforms have provided resources and engagement with civil society in these regions.