"Antisemitism Surges Online: Antisemitic content on platforms like X spiked by 919 percent following the October 7 Hamas attacks, spreading hate that deeply affects Jewish users, especially the young. Enhanced moderation systems combining AI and human oversight, along with stricter regulations, are
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needed to curb this surge.
Gaming as a Breeding Ground for Hate: Unmoderated gaming spaces foster antisemitic slurs, memes, and symbols, normalizing hate speech in digital culture. Gaming platforms must implement stronger moderation, promote education, and create inclusive communities.
Anonymity Fuels Toxicity: Anonymous accounts enable users to engage in hate speech without any fear of repercussions, fostering a hostile online environment. Balancing user privacy with accountability through improved tracking and penalties can address this issue.
Algorithms Amplify Hate Speech: Social media algorithms prioritize divisive content, creating echo chambers that spread antisemitism and extremist ideas. Platforms must redesign algorithms to limit harmful content, with oversight and updated laws holding them accountable." (Executive summary)
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"Am 18. Februar 1943 hielt Reichspropagandaminister Joseph Goebbels eine Rede im Berliner Sportpalast, die heute als eine der bekanntesten politischen Reden der deutschen Geschichte und zugleich als warnendes Beispiel für den manipulativen Erfolg nationalsozialistischer Propaganda gilt. Die Rede ku
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lminierte in zehn rhetorischen Fragen, die der Redner an sein Publikum richtete. Auf die Frage "Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?" reagierten die Anwesenden mit markantem Getöse und Applaus, was sich ins kollektive Gedächtnis Deutschlands eingebrannt hat. Der Historiker Peter Longerich beleuchtet die weniger bekannte Vor- sowie Nachgeschichte der Rede. Er zeigt auf, dass ihr bereits ein länger währendes Bemühen des Propagandaministers vorausging, seinen Einfluss auf die deutsche Kriegsführung zu erweitern und seine Strategie eines "totalen Krieges" gegen abweichende Vorstellungen in der nationalsozialistischen Führung durchzusetzen. Auf offene Ohren bei Hitler traf er damit jedoch erst nach der verlorenen Schlacht von Stalingrad und weiteren verheerenden Kriegsniederlagen. Zwar deutete Goebbels seine Rede als propagandistischen Erfolg, aber die zeitgenössischen Kommentatoren im In- und Ausland teilten, wie Longerich darlegt, diese Auffassung keineswegs einhellig." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This study discusses the relationship among the various dimensions of populism, hate speech, and disinformation within the political discourse on X (formerly Twitter) in India and Pakistan. Employing manual content analysis, we examined 7,141 posts from both populist and non-populist political lead
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ers in both countries. Our findings reveal a significant correlation among these three challenging concepts, indicating that posts exhibiting higher levels of populism also tend to score higher on both hate speech and disinformation. Although certain aspects of populism, such as a pro-people and anti-elite approach, are not inherently harmful, our study emphasizes that Manicheanism is a problematic concept in political discourses because of its close association with hate speech and disinformation." (Abstract)
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"This paper examines the counter-violent extremism and anti-terrorism measures in Australia, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States by investigating how governments leveraged internet intermediaries as their surrogate censors. Particular attention is paid to how political rhetoric l
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ed to legislation passed or proposed in each of the countries studied, and their respective restrictive measures are compared against the recommendations specified by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. A typology for international comparison is proposed, which provides further insights into a country’s policy focus." (Abstract)
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"Soziale Medien haben die Verbreitung von Antisemitismus revolutioniert. Algorithmisch verstärkt verbreitet sich Antisemitismus auf den Plattformen in Sekundenschnelle, kostenlos und global. Die daraus resultierende Gefahr für Jüdinnen*Juden ist eine große gesellschaftliche Herausforderung. Das
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Buch gibt Einblicke in Fallstudien auf verschiedenen Plattformen und zeigt, wie soziale Medien durch die Verbreitung antisemitischer Inhalte von politischem Akteur*innen instrumentalisiert werden. Es werden innovative Methoden und Tools (CrowdTangle oder Voyant Tools) und neue Konzepte (Social Media Literacy, tertiärer Antisemitismus, antisemitische Eskalation) vorgestellt und Strategien, um Antisemitismus auf den Plattformen zu bekämpfen, kritisch evaluiert. Dieses Buch bietet eine umfassende Einführung für alle, die sich mit der Problematik Antisemitismus in den sozialen Medien auseinandersetzen wollen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Online and platform content that may cause harm through the breach of human rights is sufficiently widespread to have raised concerns about the potentially severe implications for the future of trust, safety, democracy and sustainable development. A certain amount of this content is curbed by the d
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ominant commercial platforms’ content moderation mechanisms. Much still escapes their nets and in worst cases is algorithmically amplified and even supported by advertising. Some smaller platforms expressly allow hatred and conspiracy theories, even facilitating the organisation of offline attacks on democracy. The roots of the problems lie in : ‘attention economics’, automated advertising systems, external manipulators, company spending priorities and stakeholder knowledge deficits. Of value in addressing these problems will be the development of guidelines for regulating platforms, centred on safeguarding human rights, promoting transparency and limiting the business processes and technical mechanisms that underpin potentially harmful content online." (Key trends uncovered, page 2)
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"Platform problems are linked to the fact that they are not self-governing according to agreed industry standards but mainly ‘solo-governing’ when it comes to content curation and moderation. Reaction to the failure of current platform efforts to regulate content includes the danger of over-regu
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lation by state entities, which carries real risks to freedom of expression. The purview of what may need to be part of new regulatory arrangements includes the interplay between policy, practice, business models and technology. There is a pluralism of platforms and other actors in the “tech stack”, who have different roles in the online content landscape, with concomitant implications for regulatory arrangements. Independent media, whistle-blowers and civil society organisations are significant factors in pushing platform accountability but mechanisms of transparency should be considered for regulatory protections and support. New technology is raising new challenges for platforms’ content moderation. Platform policy and practice is especially significant for elections." (Key trends uncovered, page 2)
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"Platform policies lack clarity about the relationship between them, and also about how policies should be applied at global and local levels. How platforms understand and identify harms is insufficiently mapped to human rights standards, and there is a gap in how policy elements should deal with di
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fferent rights or with business models when there are tensions. Policies are not always transparent and do not provide sufficiently for risk assessment. Implementation and enforcement by platforms have serious shortfalls, while attempts to improve outcomes by automating moderation have their limits. Inequalities in policy and practice abound in relation to different categories of people, countries and languages. Of value in addressing these problems could be the development of guidance for the governance and regulation of frameworks that sets out suggested standards and parameters for platform policies and related operations." (Key trends uncovered, page 2)
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"This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee, examines risks that contemporary social media - focusing in particular on the most widely-used platforms - present for democracy, the rul
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e of law and fundamental rights. The study focuses on the governance of online content, provides an assessment of existing EU law and industry practices which address these risks, and evaluates potential opportunities and risks to fundamental rights and other democratic values." (Abstract)
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"This book is the result of a conference that could not take place. It is a collection of 26 texts that address and discuss the latest developments in international hate speech research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. This includes case studies from Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Nigeria,
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and India, theoretical introductions to the concepts of hate speech, dangerous speech, incivility, toxicity, extreme speech, and dark participation, as well as reflections on methodological challenges such as scraping, annotation, datafication, implicity, explainability, and machine learning. As such, it provides a much-needed forum for cross-national and cross-disciplinary conversations in what is currently a very vibrant field of research." (Back cover)
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"The entanglement of Jihad, Political Violence, and Media has determined the lives of Muslims in Europe and the US over the past 20 years. This book unravels the nexus of these elements, to critically examine how their conjunction is perpetuated, reproduced, or disputed. In 16 case studies, the cont
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ributors critically reflect on the identification of jihad with political violence, address the academic, legal, political and broader public production of knowledge on this topic, examine the aesthetic formations involved in the mediation and reaffirmation of this narrow understanding, explore the experiential worlds of people whose ideas and actions are labelled as and affected by notions of violent jihad, and illuminate the institutional and media contexts (e.g. of archives) in which an entanglement of jihad and political violence takes effect, with profound consequences." (Publisher description)
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"The three countries [Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Kenya] provide evidence of online hate speech and disinformation affecting human rights offline. The evidence is not comprehensive yet clear enough to raise serious concerns. Online gender-based violence is also reported as critical in the
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three countries. In the three countries, national legislation to address harmful content shows some degree of inconsistency in comparison to international standards, notably in relation to the protection of freedom of expression. The reasons for such inconsistency vary among countries. The effective enforcement of legal frameworks is uneven in all three countries. Social and cultural inequalities are often reproduced in government or judicial decisions, and vagueness in legislation opens space for discretionary decisions. Platform companies have offices in Indonesia and Kenya, but not in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the three countries, there is a lack of transparency in how companies allocate the roles of moderation tasks, including the number of different language moderators and their trusted partners and sources. Companies do not process content moderation in some of the main local languages and community standards are not entirely or promptly available in local languages." (Executive summary)
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"The proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on online platforms has serious implications for human rights, trust and safety as per international human rights law and standards. The mutually-reinforcing determinants of the problems are: ‘attention economics’; automated advertising system
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s; external manipulators; company spending priorities; stakeholder knowledge deficits; and flaws in platforms’ policies and in their implementation. How platforms understand and identify harms is insufficiently mapped to human rights standards, and there is a gap in how generic policy elements should deal with local cases, different rights and business models when there are tensions. Enforcement by platforms of their own terms of service to date has grave shortfalls, while attempts to improve outcomes by automating moderation have their limitations. Inequalities in policy and practice abound in relation to different categories of people, countries and languages, while technology advances are raising even more challenges. Problems of ‘solo-regulation’ by individual platforms in content curation and moderation are paralleled by harms associated with unilateral state regulation. Many countries have laws governing content online, but their vagueness fuels arbitrary measures by both authorities and platforms. Hybrid regulatory arrangements can help by elaborating transparency requirements, and setting standards for mandatory human rights impact assessments." (Key messages)
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"This guide for policy-makers developed by the United Nations’ Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect (OSAPG) and UNESCO provides specific strategies and approaches to address hate speech within and through education. Countering harmful, discriminatory and violent narrativ
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es in the form of xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and other types of intolerance, whether online or offline, requires interventions at every level of education, in both formal and non-formal settings. This guide offers concrete recommendations, good practices and lessons learned on how to combat hate speech and provide safe and respectful learning environments, as well as the broader goal of fostering inclusive societies." (Back cover)
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