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Digital Hate: Perpetrators, Audiences, and (Dis)Empowered Targets

Project description

A closer look at hate speech online

The internet is free for all forms of expression. However, there is content out there that spreads, incites, promotes or justifies hatred. The ERC-funded DIGIHATE project will carry out a systematic investigation on the perpetrators, audiences and targets of digital hate. Specifically, it will investigate why digital hate emerges, why it is often tolerated, and what kind of effects it has. It will analyse the reasons, perceptions and consequences of digital hate for all involved actors. Moreover, it will use innovative methodologies to study the perpetrators of digital hate and to systematically look at both disempowered (women and Muslim minorities) and empowered (politicians, journalists and scientists) targets of digital hate. Finally, it will describe the responses of those two groups.

Objective

The skyrocketing rise of digital hate can be considered the dark side of the democratizing power of the internet. Despite growing interest in the topic, there has never been a systematic investigation about the perpetrators, audiences, and targets of digital hate. To discover why digital hate emerges, why it is often tolerated, and what kind of effects it has, DIGIHATE will analyze the reasons, perceptions, and consequences of digital hate for all involved actors. In particular, DIGIHATE will cause a paradigm shift by systematically looking at both disempowered and empowered targets of digital hate as well as their complex intersections.
Nine work packages (WPs) will form a unique multidisciplinary, multi-language, mixed-method approach, including computational analysis, qualitative work, large comparative (panel) surveys, experiments, and a longitudinal measurement burst design in four countries. WP 1 will conceptualize digital hate based on a context-rich netnographic analysis of online communities. WPs 2-3 will examine the actual perpetrators of digital hate using innovative methodologies. WPs 4-5 will study the perceptions and moderation strategies by the witnessing audience and explain why audiences remain silent. WPs 6-7 will comprehensively examine the effects on and the responses by the disempowered (i.e. women and Muslims) and empowered targets (i.e. politicians, journalists, and scientists) as well as their intersections. WPs 8-9 will develop a novel multi-platform, multi-issue comparative computational analysis of digital hate that is built upon the actual perceptions of digital hate by those who receive it, rather than using predefined, potentially biased AI algorithms.
A project of this scale and disciplinary breadth has never been attempted before. DIGIHATE will not only move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art in the literature, its findings will also be helpful for building and maintaining dignified societies in the digital world.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-ADG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 499 591,00
Address
UNIVERSITATSRING 1
1010 WIEN
Austria

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Region
Ostösterreich Wien Wien
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 499 591,25

Beneficiaries (1)

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