DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND EXTREME SPEECH: APPROACHES TO COUNTER ONLINE HATE by Sahana Udupa April 2021 Commissioned Research Paper for the United Nations Peacekeeping Technology Strategy https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/digital_technology_and_extreme_speech_udupa_17_sept_2021.pdf
the paper proposes four priority areas for UN entities:
► tackling global unevenness in platform governance
► connecting critical communities
► monitoring ‘gray’ zones, fringe actors, and smaller/domestic platforms
► engaging repressive states to tackle coordinated disinformation and hate campaigns.
the paper builds on the framework of ‘extreme speech’ rather than the more commonly invoked term,
‘hate speech’. ‘Extreme speech’ emphasizes the importance of longer histories of exclusion, racialization and dispossession that underpin contemporary digital manifestations of hate. At the same time, it draws attention to rapidly mutating online user practices including recent trends of hateful language that comes cloaked in ‘funny’ memes and wordplays, and intricate networks of political manipulation that draw not only on technology but also social trust.
The normative emphasis of the ‘hate speech’ discourse hinges on the imperative for immediate action, and hence raises the risk of glossing over historical trajectories, cultural subtleties and evolving ground realities.
Moving beyond technological solutionism, crisis driven actions and moral panics about digital communication, the framework of extreme speech offers a way to develop culturally appropriate and holistic interventions. Such interventions can be grouped under four interconnected levels (global, national, bilateral and local/community) and a mix of five high-level action frames (intermediation, policy pressure, connection, monitoring, and training/awareness) relevant for each level.
Repressive and authoritarian assaults on online speech
► In cases of state aligned coordinated attacks or authoritarian controls over platform regulations, and dramatic turmoil when companies feel the pressure to take swift actions at the cost of due diligence processes, UN entities should apply pressure to, and if necessary,
support social media companies to comply with global standards of content moderation and human rights protection by offering procedural clarity around escalation protocols and decision making. An institutionalized global structure to regularly convene social media companies to address repressive assaults on online speech will be a significant step towards addressing upheavals that unfold at the national levels. Convening different social media companies is especially critical during elections since disinformation campaigns funded by
resource rich political parties have begun to increasingly adopt cross-platform manipulation tactics.
► When ruling governments are directly involved in digital disinformation and hate campaigns, it is critical to partner with civil society monitoring groups and global digital rights organizations for awareness raising and capacity building of key State actors such as
judges and the judicial personnel. UN entities can also provide context sensitive positive narratives to social media companies to engage hate influencers online for user education and sensitization.
Digital Hate https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/digital-hate
The Global Conjuncture of Extreme Speech by Sahana UdupaIginio GagliardonePeter Hervik
The euphoria that has accompanied the birth and expansion of the internet as a "liberation technology" is increasingly eclipsed by an explosion of vitriolic language on a global scale.