Fighting Hate Speech on Social Media: The Challenge of “Deep Work” in Digital Peacebuilding (Social Media and Peacebuilding)

As part of a larger trend of online peacebuilding, efforts to combat hate speech frequently fall short in addressing the underlying causes of conflict that are connected to hate speech. Hate speech defends injustice and inequality while encouraging violence and extremism and undermining democracy. Instead of focusing on its intermediate function in maintaining conflict settings, current attempts aim to reduce its direct role in violence. With an emphasis on word identification (lexicalism), data analysis for conflict prevention (dashboardism), reporting and removal (deletionism), reactive response with alternative narratives (crowd-counterism), and control of hate speech (presentism), the chapter examines a research on Sri Lanka’s strategy for combating hate speech on social media. The fundamental socioeconomic aspects of conflict are not addressed by these technical fixes, only its manifestations.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-73917-0_5