The expression of hate speech against Afro-descendant, Roma, and LGBTQ+ communities in YouTube comments
This paper addresses the specificities of online hate speech against the Afro-descendant, Roma, and LGBTQ+
communities in Portugal. The research is based on the analysis of CO-HATE, a corpus composed of 20,590 YouTube comments, which
were manually annotated following detailed guidelines created for that purpose. We applied methods from corpus
linguistics to assess the prevalence of overt and covert hate speech, counter-speech, and offensive speech, considering different
grounds of discrimination, and to investigate the main linguistic and rhetorical strategies underlying hatred messages. The
research results highlight the importance of tackling covert hate speech, a recurring phenomenon often anchored in irony and
fallacious argumentation, including the emotional appeal to fear and the implicit call to action. We believe this study will aid
in advancing the analysis of online hate speech, while promoting the development of efficient automated detection models,
specifically regarding the Portuguese language.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Hate speech corpora
- 3.Methods
- 3.1Data collection
- 3.2Annotators profile
- 3.3Annotation guidelines
- 3.3.1Speech acts
- 3.3.2Grounds of discrimination
- 3.3.3Rhetorical devices
- 3.3.4Sentiment
- 4.Inter-annotator agreement
- 5.Results and discussion
- 5.1Categories distribution
- 5.2Linguistic realization of hate speech
- 5.3Rhetorical and discursive strategies underlying covert hate speech
- 4.3.1Appeal to action
- 4.3.2Irony, sarcasm and negative stereotyping
- 6.Concluding remarks
- Declaration of conflicting interests
- Notes
-
References
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