Publication details
Negotiating hate and conflict in online comments: Between affirmation and dissent
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The presentation addresses the interactional construction of hate speech in internet discussion forums, with the aim of uncovering some of the strategies whereby users negotiate verbally offensive behaviour. While there has been substantial research into the forms of hate speech and offensive behaviour in the context of political and media discourse, where the negative language targets various groups of ‘others’ (e.g. ethnic minorities, immigrants and other ‘outgroups’), much less attention has been paid to the interactional dynamics of the debate between the users themselves, particularly where some conflict of opinions arises. Based on data from English and Czech online news forums, the talk maps the users’ interactions between different levels of comments, i.e. the first-order comments (which react to news articles and tend to contain some elements of hate speech and negatively opinionated commentary) and second-order comments (which react to the previous comments as follow-ups). The data indicate that while first-order commenters, due to setting the tone of the discussion, could be seen as opinion leaders within the micro-community of the online users, the second-order commenters need to negotiate the interpersonal space along a cline ranging from affirmation to difference. The presentation suggests that contrary to the general perception of online commenting as a ‘social bubble’, there is a surprising amount of conflict and dissent taking many different forms. |
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