LLS Colloquium: Let's spell it out! - Cross-linguistic perceptual differences between written and spoken hate speech

On Wednesday 16th November 2022, Oliver Niebuhr (University of Southern Denmark) will be presenting on "Cross-linguistic perceptual differences between written and spoken hate speech".

Talk: Let's spell it out! - Cross-linguistic perceptual differences between written and spoken hate speech

The recipient is a stimulus-external factor that has so far hardly been investigated in hate-speech research. However, addressing this factor is essential to understand how and why hate speech unfolds its negative effects and which characteristics of the recipient influence these effects. The presentation summarizes the results of a 4-year research project that is based on authentic hate-speech posts from Twitter and Facebook has been conducted in cross-linguistic, German-Danish context. The written hate-speech posts were realized by professional speakers to get their spoken-language pendants. Based on these two sets of stimuli, two types of perception experiments were carried out with a total of about 200 participants in both countries: explicit assessments of the stimuli through regular rating tasks and implicit assessments of the stimuli through bio-signals (EEG, breathing, SCR, heart rate). Results show that Danes reacted more sensitively than Germans to hate speech containing figurative language (swear words), while Germans reacted more sensitively than Danes to hate speech with Holocaust references. The effect of the presentation medium depended on the respective hate speech type. In particular, speaking out hate speech based on irony and indirectness attenuated its effects on recipients to such an extent that it is questionable whether the stimuli were still perceived as instances of hate speech at all. The presentation concludes with outlining key tasks of future studies and practical implications for the punishment and management of hate speech on social media.

The talk will take place at 3pm on Zoom, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end. Please sign up to receive a zoom invite at this link.

Event poster: LLS Colloquium: Let's spell it out! - Cross-linguistic perceptual differences between written and spoken hate speech