In the last decade, academic research on race, racism and online hate speech has seen a remarkable development. Nevertheless, a significant part of this theoretical production remains chained to the “prejudice paradigm”, suggesting that the authors of these discourses are extremists. However, I argue that racism should not be viewed as a marginal phenomenon of Western societies, but should instead be problematized from a broader ideological framework. Based on a critical analysis of the discourse on the social media platforms Facebook and Youtube, as well as comments found in two Portuguese online newspapers, the aim of this talk is to characterize and categorize racial hate speeches in the Portuguese digital sphere. Collected data reinforces the idea that they reflect the rooted nature of Portuguese racism, which is why the thesis that these hate narratives are limited within the borders of the far right must be abandoned. Analysis also confirms what has already been stressed out by some literature, which argues that only through the acknowledgment of the structural nature of racism will it be possible to better understand the extent to which the international political context merely created the necessary conditions for the legitimization and banalization of hate narratives.

--

Racism,online hate speech,Portugal,Media

• Sociology - Social Sciences
• Media and Communications - Social Sciences
• Anthropology - Social Sciences