Despite the Union’s effort to fight against online hate speech (OHS), several reports showed an increase in OHS during 2020-21. The current pandemic provided a context for increased scapegoating and stigmatization, and minority groups are disproportionally targets of hatred discourse. OHS is a persistent threat to the Union’s values and there is a need for more knowledge on its content, detection and countering, as highlighted in the current Call. Portugal, as other member states, has seen an escalation of hate speech against immigrants, racial/ethnic groups, and LGBTIQ communities.

However, there is no systematized knowledge nor tools designed to detect, monitor and prevent OHS against these communities. Our project aims at addressing this need, offering a comprehensive, participatory and culturally sensitive approach to analyse, detect, and counter, direct and indirect OHS in Portuguese language. 

To better tackle and prevent OHS we need to know and understand the hate in it. We combine social and language sciences with cutting edge computer sciences techniques, offering a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to:

a) analyse content and propagation of OHS and counter speech in user generated content (e.g., tweets) in Portugal,

b) create models for its automatic detection,

c) offer culturally sensitive and tailored guidelines and tools for effective detection, prevention and countering narratives to be used by individuals, civil society organizations, and policy makers.

Our results have a 3-fold impact, leading to problem solving actions that meet the needs of the target populations:

a) increased scientific knowledge of both OHS and OCS narratives in Portuguese language,

b) increased cooperation between the scientific community, civil society organizations, and public authorities regarding OHS detection and effective countering narratives,

c) increased public awareness of OHS and effective OCS strategies.

Despite all efforts, OHS is a persistent threat to the Union’s values and there is a need for more knowledge on OHS content, detection and countering, as highlighted in the priority 4 of the current Call. Specifically, in the case of Portugal, there is no systematized knowledge nor tools designed to detect, monitor and prevent OHS against the most targeted minority groups (I.e., racial and ethnic, immigrant and LGBTIQ communities). Our project aims at addressing this need, offering a comprehensive and culturally sensitive approach to analyse, detect, and counter direct and indirect OHS in the Portuguese language. Overall, our results will directly address the expected outcomes of priority 4, having a 3-fold impact: a) increased scientific knowledge of both OHS and OCS narratives in Portuguese language, b) increased cooperation between the scientific community, civil society organizations, and public authorities regarding OHS detection and effective countering narratives and c) increased public awareness of OHS and effective OCS strategies. Specifically, regarding short-term results, the project will generate, during its implementation, several important deliverables (e.g., datasets, annotation guidelines, prototypes, good practices and guidelines, see WPs for full description).

Currently there is no competent authority that monitors hate speech or hate crimes in Portugal. These crimes have no specific legal framework and are framed within the general discrimination crimes/law. The national authority responsible to monitor, prevent and fight racial discrimination, and to sanction the practice of acts that result in the violation of fundamental rights is the partner of the consortium -  ICDR.

Additionally, the consortium will reach relevant stakeholders such CNCS (National Centre for Cybersecurity) that promotes and dynamizes the innovation and development of projects in the area of cybersecurity, both nationally and internationally, for citizens, companies and Public Administration. CNCS also coordinates the Centro Internet Segura consortium, whose main goals include combating illegal, harmful and abusive online content.

Through appropriate dissemination activities (e.g., final project meeting, press releases, newsletter) and exploitation these short-term results will contribute to medium-term impacts for both the targeted groups and society in general. Specifically, increased knowledge on the content and features of OHS against the involved target groups, as well as of effective strategies to counteract it, will empower civil society organizations and public authorities to detect, monitor and tackle OHS effectively. Considering there is currently no other tool to do so in Portugal, this is expected to improve the detection and countering of OHS nationally. Importantly, not only the targeted communities of OHS will benefit from this knowledge, but also the society in general, as some of the dissemination  activities aim at increasing awareness of OHS in the general public, increasing the sensitive to this issue and ultimately empowering bystanders of OHS to intervene and counteract hate speech on behalf of victims.

Finally, our innovative interdisciplinary approach, cross-cutting psychology, linguistics and computer sciences has potential to impact, in the long term, the production of scientific knowledge on OHS, contributing thus to the continuation and sustainability of this line of research. As referred, with appropriate exploitation of results, namely adjustments to other cultural contexts, our results can have a long-term impact for the world Portuguese speaking community, considering Portuguese is one of the most used languages online.

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