Article published in:

Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 7:2 (2019) ► pp. 240–268

Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum

Linguistic analysis and automatic detection

Sylvia Jaki | University of Hildesheim

Tom De Smedt | University of Antwerp

Maja Gwóźdź | University of Munich

Rudresh Panchal | Columbia University

Alexander Rossa | University of Hull

Guy De Pauw | Textgain

This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum Incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels, a virtual community of isolated men without a sexual life, who see women as the cause of their problems and often use the forum for misogynistic hate speech and other forms of incitement. Involuntary celibates have attracted media attention and concern, after a killing spree in April 2018 in Toronto, Canada. The aim of this study is to shed light on the group dynamics of the incel community, by applying mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze how the users of the forum create in-group identity and how they construct major out-groups, particularly women. We investigate the vernacular used by incels, apply automatic profiling techniques to determine who they are, discuss the hate speech posted in the forum, and propose a Deep Learning system that is able to detect instances of misogyny, homophobia, and racism, with approximately 95% accuracy.

Keywords: misogyny, hate speech, social media, text analytics, forensic linguistics, text profiling

Published online: 08 July 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00026.jak

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