Online hatred has become an everyday reality for many population groups across the EU. According to the 2012 survey on Violence Against Women of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), one in 20 women in the EU reported having experienced cyber harassment.
Furthermore, in Spark’s previous ‘Study to support the preparation of the European Commission’s initiative to extend the list of EU crimes in Article 83 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU to hate speech and hate crime’, we found that the increase in internet and social media usage has brought even more hate speech online over recent years.
Spark, in consortium with RAND Corporation, will be working on a new study analysing online hatred in selected EU Member States. The purpose of this study is to provide FRA with data on and analysis of online content in relation to hate speech, harassment and incitement to violence and hatred concerning ethnic origin and sex/gender. The results of this study will contribute towards understanding the challenges when fighting online hatred through content moderation techniques from a fundamental rights perspective.
