Hate Speech on Social Media: Ways to Combat 2-3

By Dolly Al-Sarraf
Professor of Sociology - Lebanese University

Part 2 of 3: The Relationship between Hate Speech, Nationalism, and Electronic Flies

Hate Speech and Nationalism:
The digital space provides its users with a virtual and broad platform that allows freedom of expression on various topics, presenting ideas and ideologies through equal opportunities for participation and dialogue. However, it also facilitates the production of content that embodies hatred and anger resulting from inherent nationalism in the cognitive and social structure of various Arab societies. This nationalism serves as a driving force for behaviors in both real and digital life. Nationalism manufactures hatred in its mental factories, and hatred is a complex process resulting from a complex mentality in the social structure, not an innate act stemming from a vacuum.
The manifestations of nationalism are evident in Arab digital content, as stated by Dr. Nadim Mansouri, a digital sociology expert. He emphasizes that the concept of nationalism connects individuals spontaneously and intentionally with major and closed social units, such as tribes and clans in the past, and currently with political family, nationalist political party, and religious sectarianism. Despite being a traditional concept, we are surprised to find that the digital generation operates within its framework, making it a modern concept or an old concept with a new twist, applicable to all ages (Al-Qazzaz, 2021).

It is essential to note that hate speech on social media varies depending on the entity launching it. It could be a state with a cyber army, marketing its ideas and projects in various forms of discourse. It might be political, religious, or sectarian parties or organized groups or individuals. All these entities share in spreading hate speech pulsating with nationalism, surpassing the boundaries of freedom of expression, as these are calculated strategies to direct each group towards its own nationalism. This interaction results in various forms of hate/racist/national/religious/sectarian/political speeches.

Electronic Flies and Hate Speech:
In recent years, the term "electronic flies" has emerged, referring to the extensive use of fake accounts in the online space, whether to defend a particular point of view or to attack an opposing one.
Electronic flies are used on various social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter) to defend or attack political, social, economic, artistic, religious, and other issues. This involves emphasizing that supporters of a specific idea or opinion are the majority.

This technique requires numerous fake accounts to succeed, using all weapons to achieve its goal, including falsifying facts, cursing, defamation, vilification, and excommunication. These actions fall under the umbrella of hate speech. When electronic flies target a person, company, government, state, language, religion, community, individuals, traditions, thoughts, race, or gender, they use hate speech as the basis for publications and tweets in this context. These campaigns often succeed because they play on sensitive strings for people, such as religion, ethnicity, belonging, language, defending rights, and other motivators that prompt users to write posts and tweets that serve the same context.

Part 3: The United Nations Responsibility

The United Nations has decided to establish a global day against hate speech starting from June 2022. Member states will be called upon to support transparent systems that facilitate access to identify, monitor, collect data, and analyze trends in hate speech, supporting effective responses against hate speech. Member states are also urged to continue working to promote a culture of peace for contributing to peace-building and achieving sustainable development.

In July 2021, the United Nations General Assembly, with the unanimous agreement of its 193 member states, adopted a resolution presented by Morocco against hate speech. The resolution condemns any call for hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence through print, audiovisual, electronic media, or social media. The resolution encourages all countries, UN agencies, regional and non-governmental organizations, and other relevant parties to deepen their understanding of the action plan to combat hate speech and other initiatives aimed at promoting tolerance, understanding, dialogue between religions and cultures, respecting and accepting differences, tolerance, respecting diversity, peaceful coexistence, and respecting human rights.

In the same context, the UN resolution called on countries to take effective measures in accordance with their commitments under international human rights law to address and punish such acts. It emphasized that freedom of religion or belief, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to peaceful assembly, and the right to form associations are closely interrelated and mutually reinforcing. These rights play a role in combating all forms of bias and discrimination based on religion or belief. Countries, primarily responsible for combating discrimination and hate speech, along with all relevant parties, including political and religious leaders, were urged to promote integration and unity within the framework of measures taken to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes condemning and combating racism, xenophobia, hate speech, incitement to hatred and violence, and discrimination, including age-based stigma.

The United Nations leads efforts to combat discrimination and hate speech, focusing on both traditional media and social media within its new strategy. Media institutions play a role in developing codes of professional conduct and principles urging journalists to avoid discrimination and promote hatred while performing their duties. However, these institutions fear that some governments may exploit the fight against discrimination and hate speech as a pretext to limit freedom of expression and the free flow of information through enacting laws regulating media work.

In the same context, in 2019, the United Nations developed a strategy outlining its action plan on hate speech, based on the following principles:

Enhancing the right to freedom of expression and communication as a suitable strategy to counter hate speech.
Shared responsibility between governments, communities, the private sector, and individuals in confronting hate speech.
Cultivating a new generation of digital technology citizens to empower them to recognize, reject, and counter hate speech.
Promoting research on the underlying causes and motives behind hate speech and the conditions leading to its emergence, coordinating collection and research efforts.
To achieve these principles, the United Nations committed to the necessity of enhancing partnerships between relevant entities in the fight against hate speech, including those working in the technology sector, governments, international and regional organizations, private sector companies, media, and civil society organizations. It affirmed support for member states in capacity building and developing appropriate policies to reduce hate speech. In this context, it promised to organize international educational conferences under the framework of prevention and combating.

Despite the significant role played by the United Nations in addressing hate speech, it should pay deeper attention to combating this phenomenon by forming global legal teams working on establishing suitable legislation. Through these legislations, social media companies and countries should be obliged to monitor content based on a clear scientific guide applicable to all platforms. All countries should be mandated to take legal action against non-responsive digital platforms.