About hate speech in the digital age: psychological and IT perspectives

The feeling of hatred is not a recent invention, nor is the possibility of expressing it in words. However, the recent digitization of every aspect of our lives has given the phenomenon a new face: 'hate speech,' which each of us encounters today especially on social media, has taken on unprecedented traits with regard to the forms and intensity according to which it manifests itself, as to the possibilities of its propagation. Anyone who utters hate speech today, unlike in the past, can potentially reach an incredibly large audience, foment fights, even direct political opinions and voting choices. There is no need to start from an exposed political or media position: thanks to the network, any connected individual can produce content that could go viral. But while this discourse is applicable to any type of content, we see that in fact the hate content that goes viral is often linked to political and electoral purposes and, therefore, we recognize the implementation of precise strategies aimed at ensuring its dissemination to broad but well-defined target audiences. The victims of such discourse may be individuals, more often whole groups characterized by ethnicity, sexual choice, and political orientation. This presentation proposes the idea that, in order to understand this phenomenon in its current form, it is necessary to combine two perspectives: to consider the computing factors that govern the virality of content on the Web; to identify the psychological dynamics underlying the 'contagion' of hate ideas. The theoretical proposal consists specifically in using the theory of the 'anchoring effect', proposed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, to interpret the dynamics of the spread of hate speech on a psychological level, starting from fake news, trying to explain how it is possible to bend the user to arguments that are often rationally not very credible and realistic, and foment aversion towards individuals or entire groups. This psychological theory will be combined with the observation of cyber factors relating to the manipulation of algorithms, the alteration of documents and the violation of personal data and histories for the purpose of microtargeting. In conclusion, the expected result is an original philosophical interpretation of the hate speech phenomenon, as there are no previous studies in the field of philosophy of science that combine computer science and anchoring psychology theory for this purpose. Looking at the case studies in the light of this philosophical interpretation will offer conceptual tools to improve the critical spirit of users towards hate content and thus hopefully limit its circulation.