hate speech – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Call for articles: Special Issue of Religions: Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech. Deadline: 28 February 2023.

Message from the Guest Editor, Dr. Amparo Huertas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain):

The focus of this Special Issue is how activity in social media promotes interreligious dialogue from an insight into the online behaviour of citizens, as individuals and as communities.

Nevertheless, we also know that social media does not seem a good space for negotiation. On one hand, religion (usually linked to minorities, migration, and conflict in intercultural context) is one of the topics that can result in polarisation. Additionally, on the other hand, in the area of political communications, the spread of populism (that usually includes religion) generates epistemic tensions. The path towards the digitalisation of social interaction does not necessarily have a beneficial consequence from the social point of view. In that sense, studies about hate speech related to religion are welcome.

Finally, we are interested in research from a gender perspective. Although many of the recent studies are focused on specific problems of Muslim women, the history of women and religion presents multiple issues for whose analysis the gender perspective is necessary (masculine authority or female leadership are two examples).

Call for papers: Hate Speech in Communication: Research and Proposals, Special issue of Comunicar: Media Education Research Journal. Editors: Mª Dolores Caceres-Zapatero, Mykola Makhortykh, & Francisco Segado-Boj. Deadline: September 30, 2021.

Hate speech is considered the conscious and willful public expression of hostility and rejection towards individuals, groups or collectives, whether based on racial, ethnic, religious or national criteria, on the grounds of gender, sexual identity or orientation, or any other criteria, which promote intolerance, discrimination, stigmatization, violence, aggression or, in its most serious form, physical extermination. These discourses, traditionally reflected in the mass media and alternative circuits, currently focus their dissemination channel through online media, digital communities and social media. Therefore, this call is open to research that helps to understand this phenomenon, both from a perspective focused on the analysis of the messages, and on the background and repercussions of this type of discourse, as well as on prevention and intervention to minimize alleviate the impact of these messages. This special issue’s projected publication date is April 1, 2022.