The use of emotions in online hate speech: between discursive strategy and manipulation

Abstract

Cyberspace is often accused of dehumanizing interpersonal relationships. However, it is, in fact, the theatre of new forms of expression of emotions. Emotional reactions, which are by nature spontaneous, are here carefully formulated. In cyberspace, when the user has an emotional reaction and wants to communicate it to his interlocutor, he will automatically take into account the context in which he is expressing himself. He will, therefore, tend to modulate the expression of his emotions according to the person he is talking to, the type of conversation they are having and the means of communication they are using. Computer-mediated communication has inevitably changed how the individual relates to the world and those around him. In particular, the notions of time and space have changed dramatically (Kramsch, 2009). The spatio-temporal shift, which characterises virtual interactions, allows users to hide their identity and the subjective motivation to communicate. In other words, users can create any kind of reality and identity through more or less truthful statements. Moreover, this discrepancy strongly influences the way interlocutors interact and express their emotions. Kramer et al. (2014) showed how an emotion expressed on Facebook influences the emotions of other users. Exposure to a large number of positive messages will lead users to post positive messages. When the user interacts in cyberspace, the emotions he is feeling dissipate instantly, before he has time to express them in writing. This is because emotions only last a few milliseconds. Therefore, the user can, more or less voluntarily, decide how to verbalize his emotional reactions. Thus, virtual communication can be considered as emotive communication. Contrary to emotional communication, where the individual expresses his emotion at the very moment he feels it, emotive communication is characterised by the description of the emotion once it has dissipated (Plantin, 2011). In other words, emotive communication is closer to the notions of performance, rhetoric and persuasion (Arndt and Janney, 1991). Emotions can, therefore, be staged to influence the speaker’s reactions and behaviour. This contribution aims at investigating three different types of hate speech produced and spread on the Internet: jihadist propaganda, anti-migrant and antisemitic messages. More precisely, the goal is to examine the way the expression of emotions (pathos) contribute to both creating a reliable and legitimate éthos, and reinforcing the arguments advanced by the speaker (logos) (Perelman and Olbrecht-Tyteca, 1988). Since in hate speech the other plays a crucial role, particular attention will be paid to the notion of otherness. Staszak (2008) defines otherness as “the results of a discursive process by which a dominant in-group (“Us”, the Self) constructs one or many dominated out-groups (“Them”, Other) by stigmatizing a difference – real or imagined – presented as a negation of identity and thus a motive for potential discrimination” (p. 2). According to Lagorgette and Larrivée (2004), when the target of hate speech (i.e., the other) is not the speaker’s addressee, the addressee is a witness of the target’s diminishment. Therefore, this may allow the speaker to either create or reinforce the coalition with the addressee, that is the in-group (Goffman, 1967). This contribution then questions the way the expression of both positive and negative emotions allows the user to distance the in-group from the out-group (Van Dijk, 2006). Furthermore, we will see how cyberspace influences the delimitation of the border drown between the in-group and the out-group. Three corpora were then collected: as far as jihadist propaganda is concerned, the study was conducted on the French jihadist online magazine Dar al-Islam. As far the anti-migrants and antisemitic discourses, the two corpora were collected from user-generated comments on YouTube. The reason is twofold: on the one hand, YouTube’s represents “a large repository of user-generated information” (Madden et al., 2013, p. 698); on the other hand, social networks would nurture the emergence of hate speech (Monnier and Seoane, 2019). In order to identify the specificities of each corpus as well as their differences and similarities, a qualitative discursive analysis was conducted. We will see how, in jihadist propaganda, the in-group is presented as a community chosen by God whose goal is to fight the disbelievers, whereas in both anti-migrants and antisemitic discourse, the in-group is perceived as a victim of the out-group. However, contrary to migrants, who are presented as inferior, Jews are seen as a powerful and rich community. By identifying and analysing both the differences and similarities of these three types of hate speech, this study aims at determining the core elements of the verbalisation of hate speech on the Internet.