Say No to hate speech!

All definitions of hate speech are reduced to a call for violence against a certain group, be it religious, national, racial, ethnic, sexual, etc. Nevertheless, it is difficult to recognize when speech has the status of free opinion, and when it exceeds (un) established borders and becomes hatred.

At the seminar held in the youth office, the focus was on hate speech on the Internet. There is a daily brutal and primitive insult to the constituent peoples, national minorities. However, there are no court cases that are conducted on the basis of incitement to hatred through online platforms.

The media are the main culprits

The media are characterized as the most common culprits for spreading hate speech and its propaganda. The media use the situation and make a sensation out of it, for the sake of which they come to a certain interest. The director of the Center for Public Law believes that the responsibility lies with the editorial board of the portal, which is obliged to remove comments that contain hate speech.

There is a legal obligation to remove comments, but there are a number of problems in terms of speed of removal, comments that are "removed" but again available, etc. There is always disagreement, whether the comment is just a personal opinion or contains elements of hate speech.

Hate speech on the Internet sometimes poses a greater threat than the weapon itself, which is usually used to commit violence. Citing the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who pointed out after the terrorist attack in that country that it is easy to ban weapons further expanding the virtual space.

The project aims to increase the level of knowledge and awareness of young people in relation to security culture and hate speech in electronic media and social networks by creating a network of peer educators in the field of youth safety culture in terms of hate speech in electronic media and social networks.

In these lectures, students could learn things related to what hate speech is, how to recognize it, how to react to it and who to turn to when recognizing hate speech.

As they spend most of their free time on the Internet, it was not difficult for them to recognize that the main hate speech centers are social networks Facebook and Twitter, where most of them have an active account, through Youtube channels where they listen to music every day, to information portals and forums where users comment on the posted content.

It's not hard to react to hate speech happening in the online world: Write to the administrator of Facebook or Twitter, Youtube or the information portal where you saw hate speech.

Yet in the offline world it is not easy. Rarely does anyone react because they don’t know who to turn to. There are no legal regulations, institutions do not deal with the Internet and the problems of the virtual world. Rarely is anyone interested in the problems that young people face.

The spread of discriminatory attitudes, incitement to hatred and violence is widely represented in the media. Due to the need to inform the public about hate speech as well as the need for everyone to be actively involved in the fight against the negative consequences of the spread of extremist attitudes and ideologies, the H8index web portal was opened.

This platform belongs to everyone and we build it together by observing, recording, remembering, learning, recognizing and analyzing hate speech and violent speech on the Internet. By reporting hate speech and degrading treatment in the public sphere, we raise community awareness of what violent speech is, participate in the fight against cyberbullying, help prevent the escalation of violence and point out potential crisis situations for individuals, groups and our country.

Get involved in the fight against discrimination. Report hate speech.