HATE SPEECH ONLINE, HATE SPEECH ON AIR

 What is “hate speech”?

 Any communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.

UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech

Hate speech covers many forms of expressions which advocate, incite, promote or justify hatred, violence and discrimination against a person or group of persons for a variety of reasons. It poses grave dangers to the cohesion of a democratic society, the protection of human rights and the rule of law. If left unaddressed, it can lead to acts of violence and conflict on a wider scale. In this sense, hate speech is an extreme form of intolerance which contributes to hate crime.

European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)

There is no unified international legal definition of hate speech, and national protection instruments are often based on different interpretations. In fact, concerning the fundamental right to freedom of speech, international law prohibits incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence[1] since, when explicit and deliberate, this might trigger actions from discrimination to atrocity crimes. Using intolerant language and activating prejudices against diverse groups and individuals belonging to them, hate speech builds on “real or perceived “identity factors” … including: “religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender,” but also characteristics such as language, economic or social origin, disability, health status, or sexual orientation, among many others”.[2]

Recognising the fact that hate speech and its consequences go against fundamental UN values and concerned with its proliferation, in July 2021, the UN General Assembly adopted a Resolution on “promoting inter-religious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in countering hate speech”. Referring to the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, launched on 18 June 2019, the Resolution proclaimed the date of June 18 as the International Day for Countering Hate Speech

With respect to the variety of countries and minorities represented by the FUEN member organisations, the Minority Hate Monitor has adopted the UN and ECRI approach to defining hate speech and addresses it as:

* An extreme form of intolerance, which

* in any communication in speech, writing or behaviour,

* attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language to

* advocate, incite, promote or justify hatred, discrimination and violence against a person belonging to a minority or a minority community as a whole

The cases presented by the Minority Hate Monitor, therefore, range from hate speech to assaults and vandalism, all targeting national minorities and/or their members.

Minority Hate Monitor is an initiative supporting the FUEN's campaign Mute Hate Speech, which aims to link the concerns of minorities, FUEN and EUROPEADA, with UEFA-EURO24 to attract as much attention as possible. Through its new Hate Cases section, the Minority Monitor project will map cases of hate speech against minorities in all of its forms – written, verbal, and visual – disseminated through media (printed, radio, TV), online platforms, art, street art, or aggressive acts against the minority cultural heritage.

From June to July 2024, within a month after the first call for inputs, eight member organisations from seven countries submitted 40 cases. This is a testament to the power of collective action. FUEN continues to collect cases, which will be published on a rolling basis. Your contribution is crucial in this fight against hate speech. To provide input, please use the following reporting form: https://forms.gle/ZX4bBA1XWehqgeAb7    

Traditional Media Regulations

Public transmission of information has been subject to strict control and censorship (with respective sanctions) since ancient times. Free speech was often oppressed, especially when not aligning with the ruling ideology, politics, or dominant values. The invention of the Gutenberg press in the mid-15th century, followed by the change in spreading information and knowledge for communication, increased the state's concern about news's impact on societies and, accordingly, the need for censorship. Freedom of speech has hence been significantly oppressed.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, democratic countries largely abandoned government censorship of mass media. With the recognition of freedom of speech and opinion as human rights, a new paradigm was set for regulating the information shared in the public space. Regulatory frameworks today, therefore, balance imposing restrictions and safeguarding rights, including pluralism. Many of the restrictions are often connected with protecting human and civil rights.

The regulation of hate speech in the media appears to be a relatively new phenomenon, especially in the common European space. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Council of Europe actively promoted media self-regulation across Europe by adopting resolutions and action plans [3]. However, at the time, hate speech was not the focus of policymakers.

The EU also promoted self-regulation in the early 2000s. In 2003, the Interinstitutional agreement on better law-making adopted by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission insisted on the importance of the use of alternative methods of regulation without particularly tackling hate speech. In 2008, however, with the Framework Decision on combating certain forms of expressions of racism and xenophobia, the public incitement to violence or hatred based on race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin became illegal in the EU space. Hence, the 2010 Audiovisual Media Services Directive (2010/13/EU) was the first EU law on broadcasting, television, and radio that expressly provided in Article 6 that member states must ensure audiovisual services not to contain any incitement to hatred’ based on race, sex, religion, nationality or other protected characteristics. The amended 2018 Audiovisual and Service Directive explicitly refers to hate speech, recognizing the new challenges emerging with the advancement of technology.

Being directly applicable in member states, the EU Directive had an impact on the advancement of national legislation throughout the countries in the common space, but the process is still under development. As the examples reveal, incidents continue to occur, and some remain unsanctioned. 

Regulating Hate Speech on Social Media

Regulating hate speech in media is particularly challenging for several reasons. One of the significant challenges is that efforts to counteract malicious content and to sanction its purposeful proliferation are often misinterpreted and countered as a violation of the fundamental human rights of freedom of opinion and expression and censorship.[4] To eliminate the rightful human rights concerns and to eliminate the possibility of misusing the provisions of international law in favour of specific personal or group interests in evoking intolerance and societal tensions, the UN has provided key guidance to States on the difference between freedom of expression and “incitement” (to discrimination, hostility and violence) in the UN Rabat Plan of Action. However, beyond legal regulations, tools such as education and awareness raising are also crucial for counteracting hate speech.[5]

Despite the significant achievements regarding the regulation of hateful content disseminated via traditional media, such as TV, radio, or print media (including their online publications), the proliferation of hate speech on social media and online channels is a significant challenge that needs to be addressed. The advancement of technology-enabled direct and real-time access to large audiences enabled the transmission of malicious content and biased interpretations of reality and fake news. The sheer scale of the phenomenon and the problematic implementation of laws upon internet traffic and content, mainly when hate speech is generated by algorithms or disseminated globally by anonymous users, evoked reactions from international institutions.

Adopting a proactive approach, the Europeans agreed with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube to support not only their users in reporting such incidents on social platforms but also civil society and national authorities in counteracting hate speech. The companies signed the proposed EC “Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online” and committed to removing messages assessed as illegal. By 2019, Instagram, Google+, Snapchat, Dailymotion, and jeuxvideo.com had also announced their intention to join the Code.

In 2022, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Dr Fernand de Varennes presented the Draft ‘Effective Guidelines on Hate Speech, Social Media and Minorities’ based on his consultations with stakeholders and various actors. The first recommendation in the document clearly states:

Social media companies (SMC) should clearly and precisely define ‘hate speech’ in their content policies and expand their protected characteristics to include any identity factor. Hate speech targeting minorities should be a distinct category and include national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities.

The importance of the initiative and the fight against hate speech, and in particular its online proliferation, was reaffirmed in 2023 by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres,[6] who stated:

We must confront bigotry by working to tackle the hate that spreads like wildfire across the internet.

Witnessing the sharp rise in hate speech and hate crime, in 2024, the members of the EU Parliament (MEPs) engaged in debates on global social media platform regulations, focusing on the enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA), in effect since February 2024, and its role in protecting democracy and online freedom. Currently, the EU law criminalises hate speech only if related to protected characteristics, such as race and ethnicity. To extend the scope so that the variety of hate incidents is covered, the list of 'EU crimes' included in Article 83 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) covers the variety of hate speech and hate crimes, a Council decision adopted by unanimity is needed.

Reported cases

Following the FUEN’s call for information submission, between June and July 2024, eleven hate cases of hate messages disseminated via traditional and online media within the period 2015-2024 were reported to the Minority Monitor by minority organisations from Croatia, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain (Catalunya), and Poland. Four of these are cases of hate speech on TV, and seven provide examples of the proliferation of verbal hate attacks on groups and individuals on social media.

From racist and anti-minority rhetoric through vulgar vocabulary to challenged right to language and identity, the reported incidents are only a tiny, even hardly representative fraction, of the great variety of negative comments, messages, and ideas disseminated thanks to the easier and low-cost access to the online platforms, where the state control over the illegal content is not yet adequately regulated. However, these examples are evidence that minorities and the members of minority communities are exposed to hate speech attacks in the public space, which, disseminated among a larger audience by the media, can have a significant negative impact on societal cohesion.  

Cases on TV

Amsterdam 2023: Racist Comments on Air

Athens 2023: Anti-minority Rhetoric

Thessaloniki 2024: No sanctions for hate speech on air

Zagreb 2024: Calls for “Croatization of media, education and science”

Cases on Social Media

Spain 2021: Challenged right to Catalan identity

Spain 2021: Hateful posts by politicians against Catalan language

Spain 2019: Hateful messages against a Red Cross campaign in Catalan language

Opole 2015: Offensive comments on social media

Opole 2020: Anti-German minority comments on the internet

Opole 2016: Hate messages sent to the German minority

Opole 2016: Offensive messages on social media

References

^[1] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 20(20), https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/ccpr.pdf

[2] What is hate speech? UN Website, https://www.un.org/en/hate-speech/understanding-hate-speech/what-is-hate-speech

[3] Resolution on Media economics and political and cultural pluralism, 1991, Third European Ministerial Conference on Mass Media; Resolution on Journalistic freedoms and human rights, 1994, Fourth European Ministerial Conference on Mass Media; Action plan for the promotion of freedom of expression and information at the pan-European level within the framework of the information society and resolution on The Impact of new communications technologies on human rights and democratic values 1995, Fifth European Ministerial Conference on Mass Media, etc

[4] The right to freedom of expression is also guaranteed by the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR, Article 10), and by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCR, Article 19). However, freedom of expression is not an absolute right since it carries also duties and responsibilities, and as ECHR prescribes, it can be subject to formalities, conditions and restrictions.

[5] Understanding hate speech, UN Website, https://www.un.org/en/hate-speech/understanding-hate-speech/hate-speech-versus-freedom-of-speech

[6] https://www.un.org/en/hate-speech/understanding-hate-speech/what-is-hate-speech