Contested meanings and uses of hate speech

Hate speech is not the most cheerful topic for a researcher. Too often, the researcher becomes the target of hate speech themselves, as especially many female researchers working with subjects related to racism, populism or gender regularly encounter. It's not uncommon to receive hundreds of insulting messages based on a single interview in media. Yet, it is important to identify and unpack the various forms of hate discourse and their societal functions is the starting point for change.

Along with my fellow researchers and our in-depth discursive and multimodal methodologies, we aim to enhance public awareness, multiliteracy skills, and critical reading of the diverse media communications that surround us.

Let's start with an example. When the Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin's photo was published in Trendi magazine in October 2020, wearing a blazer with no shirt underneath, we analysed online commentaries, finding responses such as 'Sanna, aren't you ashamed? I am ashamed that Finland's Prime Minister strips herself like this', and 'But hey! Here I am with my little breasts and too large jacket suit on my way to EU posts.'

Most internet users have witnessed this kind of talk and we could argue whether they should be considered as hate speech or as a critical commentary. In our research, we have directed our attention towards the discursive and multimodal mechanisms that underpin online hate speech. Drawing on discourse analysis, we aim to uncover the ways in which hate speech is constructed, reproduced, and legitimised through discourse and other forms of semiotic resources. Hate speech draws on an ideological, cultural and political repository of shared knowledge.

Through this lens we see that in a controversial area, the meaning of hate speech itself is contested.

Hate speech as a discursive phenomenon

Hate speech typically derogates others based on their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or some other characteristic that defines a group. Amidst the array of definitions of hate speech, it's important to understand that it often belittles and poses threats to people on account of their social identity – which makes it an interesting topic for social psychologists.

Indeed, social psychology's fascination with hate speech can be traced back to Gordon Allport's seminal 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice, demonstrating the detrimental effects of hate speech on outgroup avoidance and discrimination. His insights remain relevant today as society continues to grapple with issues of hate speech and intolerance. Social psychological research has continued to consider both the antecedents of hate speech, such as personality traits and emotional states, and the consequences, including prejudice, maintenance of status hierarchies and legitimisation of violence.

Verbal derogatory labels, slurs, and offensive metaphors are central features of hate speech. But hate speech is more than words. It is often constructed in a complex interplay and combination of rhetorical devices, threat images, humouristic and conspiratorial arguments. Multimodal semiotic resources (such as music, images, sounds) are carefully maneuvered to justify collective hate. Research has examined the rhetorical and ideological patterns that seek to legitimise the expression of hate towards various groups, including Roma, Muslims, Chinese, women, and homosexuals, to name but a few.

In our recent study (Sakki & Castrén, 2022) investigating online hate targeted at Chinese people during the Covid-19 pandemic, we uncovered the rhetorical strategies used to justify the dehumanisation of the Chinese. Animalistic metaphors, coarse language, humorous frames, and conspiracy beliefs were employed to depict the Chinese as monstrous, immoral, and threatening, thus portraying them as a homogeneous and inhumane mass deserving of attack. 'Chinese are extremely cruel, merciless, thieves and liars. They are like viruses', read one online comment. Dehumanisation was often framed as humour, using visual and multimodal tools. This allowed social media users to invoke shared negative stereotypes and express xenophobic views while potentially avoiding accusations of racism. This combination of hatred and humour, as described by Billig (2001), served to normalise and mainstream the derogatory message.

In another study, this time focusing on the forms of online hate against Finland's female prime minister Sanna Marin (Sakki & Martikainen, 2022), we paid attention to the ways emotions were deployed in the online commentaries discussing her magazine cover. The misogynist discourse, that we consider as one specific type of hate speech targeted at women active in public life, appeared as an emotional speech that excluded and dehumanised. In four 'affective practices', Marin was portrayed as immoral, incompetent, calculating and inferior.

The comments about the immoral Marin emphasised the violation of social norms and manners and expressed strong disapproval, shame and disgust. Marin was depicted as dishonoring not only herself but the entire Finnish people. With the help of humorous devices of ridicule and belittling drawing from traditional gender stereotypes associated with women as emotional and less rational actors, an image of Marin was created as professionally incompetent. The third way portrayed Marin as a calculating strategist who consciously played the political game and used her feminine aids to advance her own career.

References to Marin's lying and misconduct were often combined with sexualised insults and hatred. The fourth and most blatant form of misogyny, painting Marin as an inferior woman, was based on the logic of humiliation, objectification and animalization. It demeaned and humiliated Marin and stripped her of humanity as an object of male desire. 

Thus, different forms of dehumanisation ranging in intensity from more innocent girlishness to more violent sexualisation and animalisation, and from disapproval to belittling and humiliating, online commenters sought to accept and justify misogyny. At the same time, structures that maintain inequality were supported.

Hate speech in politics

Hate speech does not flourish only in the anonymous social media – it penetrates our whole society and politics. In another study (Pettersson et al., 2022), we were keen to expand our investigation of online misogyny into the sphere of political rhetoric. 

To do that, we explored the tactic use of misogynist discourse in the right-wing populist Finns Party. Our analysis of their 2021 municipal-election campaign video demonstrated the intricate ways in which its verbal, visual, and sonic elements interact to construct misogynist and anti-environmental discourse through humor. The intertextual references to familiar collective imagery (e.g. the image of a nagging and empty-headed woman of popular Finnish films) were made verbally, visually, and audially to produce political satire, humour, and mockery of the Finnish female-led government in general, and the Prime Minister Sanna Marin in particular.

The ultimate purpose of the campaign video was to make the misogyny associated with Marin and her female government look laughable. At the same time, through a rhetorical reversal, the misogyny turned into misandry by the main antagonist, Marin, whose entire appearance was geared towards derogating and controlling the 'honest and sensible ordinary Finnish man.

This study thus suggested that the target of hate speech within right-wing populist parties is not only an immigrant or a Muslim. By drawing on humour and a repository of shared knowledge in popular culture, misogyny can serve an effective means for a populist message.

Contested hate speech

While hate speech has become a regular phenomenon and a regularly used word in the public sphere, its uses are diverse. It has become a politicised concept in itself. This came up in our study (Sakki & Hakoköngäs, 2022) on contested meanings of hate speech in Finnish public space. We examined the meanings of elite-led TV talk show devoted to discussion on 'Hate Speech', and its reception – rejection, acceptance and re-construction – taking place at the same time as the TV show, on social media. This design enabled us to pay attention to the multiple ways the concept was understood and used by different audiences.

Unsurprisingly, the meanings of the hate speech were highly polarised. In the TV show the position of the 'hate speaker' was dominantly addressed to the supporters of the right-wing populist Finns Party; but in the online discussion, the position of hate speaker was mainly assigned to 'the tolerant' and immigrants. Social media users portrayed hate speech as a new invention of 'the tolerants' to replace the term racism, to silence and blame the ordinary Finns while at the same time allowing hate speech by Muslim immigrants. The elite were seen as arrogant by social media users, their discussions considered artificial – ostensibly open to all voices, while aiming at imposing liberal views in more indirect ways.

Combatting hate speech

As we see in our research, and in life more broadly, hate speech is a two-way street. It does not develop in a vacuum. But we all are responsible for respectful and human treatment of one another, and there many ways researchers and communities can battle hate speech.

Derogatory humour, for example, may sometimes be best addressed with humour itself. The digital affordances of new communication technologies are not the exclusive domain of hate speakers: memes, for instance, can be used to fight against hate speech. Conspiracies may be tackled by developing digital literacy skills and the methods for fact-checking.

We also have a role in calling out and countering hate speech whenever we face it. This may not silence hate speech entirely, but it can provide much-needed psychological support for its targets. It's also a start in shaping the norms of public discourse regarding what is considered acceptable and unacceptable.

Inari Sakki is a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki. 
[email protected]

References

Billig, M. (2001). Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux Klan. Discourse and Society, 12, 267-289.
Pettersson, K., Martikainen, J., Hakoköngäs, E. & Sakki, I. (2022). Female Politicians as Climate Fools: Intertextual and Multimodal Constructions of Misogyny Disguised as Humor in Political Communication. Political Psychology, 44(1), 3-20.
Sakki, I. & Castrén, L. (2022). Dehumanization through humour and conspiracies in online hate towards Chinese people during the COVID-19 pandemic. British Journal of Social Psychology, 61(4), 1418-1438.
Sakki, I. & Hakoköngäs, J. E. (2022). A Critical Discursive Psychological Study of Dialogical Constructions of Hate Speech in Established Media and Online Discussions. In K. Pettersson, & E. Nortio (Eds.), The Far-Right Discourse of Multiculturalism in Intergroup Interactions: A Critical Discursive Perspective (pp. 85-111). Palgrave Macmillan.
Sakki, I. & Martikainen, J. (2022). "Sanna, Aren't You Ashamed?": Affective-Discursive Practices in Online Misogynist Discourse of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. European Journal of Social Psychology, 52(3), 435-447.