El Oberaxe elaborará informes mensuales sobre el discurso de odio racista y xenófobo en las principales redes sociales en nuestro país

With the aim of being able to intensify and promote measures against racism and xenophobia, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, through the Spanish Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe), has taken a further step in monitoring hate speech in the main social networks of our country, with the realization of a monthly report, which will begin this same month of October. This report will provide the number of hate speech cases, the number of cases withdrawn by platforms, the target groups most affected by hate speech (North Africa, Muslims, immigrants in general, unaccompanied minors, etc. ), the distribution of hate speech according to language typology (explicit aggressive speech, non-aggressive discriminatory speech and ironic or sarcastic speech) and the typology of content (incites violence, incites expulsion, etc.)

In addition, the Oberaxe will include in its monthly report an assessment of the highlights of each month, as well as data on the possible link of speeches with specific situations, such as events or celebration of certain events. As indicated by this observatory, once the agreement between the Ministry of Migration and LALIGA is signed, the reports will contain even more elements and evaluation criteria, as well as being able to analyze and, therefore, also report and denounce, a significantly higher number of conversations or messages.

Hoaxes and fake news

More than half of the messages published through the main social networks in our country that link migrants with citizen insecurity are not based on true facts, current and/or occurred in Spain, but are false information, hoaxes or decontextualized incidents. This is one of the main conclusions that emerge from the report of the Oberaxe published only a few days ago regarding the summer months (July and August). In this regard, it should also be noted that 43 per cent of publications of racist and/or xenophobic hate speech are prompted by incidents of public insecurity, which lead to the above-mentioned links.

In this regard, the study itself points out that a clear example of the hoaxes disseminated with the aim of criminalizing people of immigrant origin were the publications associated with the murder of a child in Mocejón (Toledo) on August 18. Thus, 3% of the hate speech contents identified in this bimester referred to this event, promoting social alarmism, the perception of migrants as a threat and social fragmentation. Another specific event that influenced the dissemination of hate speech were the incidents and protests against migrants in the United Kingdom, with 4% of the contents reported by the Oberaxe linked to these events.

And precisely another of the outstanding conclusions of this bimonthly study is that there is a substantial increase, up to nine points, in hostility towards the people of North Africa, with 42% of the messages reported, as well as towards migrants in general, with four points more than in the bimonthly May-June (22%). There is also an increase in hate speech directed at unaccompanied children and adolescents, which is two points higher than in the previous period and stands at 10% of the messages.

On the content of the messages notified to social networks between the months of July and August, 44% dehumanize or severely degrade people of foreign origin; 48% have explicit aggressive language, including insults; and 29% of the messages incite violence with direct or indirect threats.

Withdrawal of 37% of notified messages

Specifically, of the messages analyzed by the Oberaxe, 506 hate speech contents were reported, of which 133 were published in Tik Tok, 122 in X, 112 in Facebook, 103 in Instagram, and 36 in Youtube. Despite the fact that in all platforms the rate of message withdrawal has increased by 13 percentage points, the truth is that it is still insufficient, since it still stands at 37% (187 messages). And while Tik Tok and Instagram remove 65% of the reported content, Youtube does so by 22%, X by 12%, and Facebook removes only 9% of the messages reported by Oberaxe.

Repin the hate speech in the field of sport

In addition to security, there has been an increase in hate speech in the field of sport, with 13% of the contents analyzed and reported. In this section, special mention should be made of some of the sporting events that have played a leading role in the summer, such as the Olympics, since 11% of the messages are directly related to the Paris Games.

Specifically, the Oberaxe study concludes that these hate messages that are spread through the monitored networks are directed against athletes who represent Spain and have a diverse ethnic origin, especially Afro-descendants and from North Africa, as also happened during the European football championship.

In order to eradicate racism in sport, whose events are considered a fertile ground for the production of intolerant speeches that transcend sports and have an impact on society as a whole, the Oberaxe works on different projects that aim precisely to make sport a valuable means of promoting inclusion, such as the European project Score, which leads this observatory dependent on the SEM.

In addition, and among other initiatives, a collaboration framework has been established between LALIGA and the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, which includes the transfer to Oberaxe of the MOOD tool and marks a series of joint lines of work to improve the monitoring of hate speech in networks.