Few academic studies focus on hate speech on television. That is partly due to the difficulty of obtaining and analyzing broadcast content. However, the spread of those hate messages implies a high reach. For this study, the researchers propose an experimental methodology to analyze the content broadcast on the 24 hours of the five Spanish free-to-air television channels over one year (2020). The authors examined the presence of abusive or hurtful vocabulary and quantified the insults aired. They extracted and studied a sample through content analysis to detect if those insults were accompanied, in any way, by expressions of hatred. Although the messages the researchers studied for this article cannot be considered speeches or hate crimes, there are some offensive comments related to gender, race, or religion, mainly on fictional products.
TopBackground
Defining hate speech is complex and depends on many factors, some of which are subjective. According to legal definitions, the Council of Europe describes hate speech as
All types of expression that incite, promote, spread, or justify violence, hatred or discrimination against a person or group of persons or that denigrates them because of their actual or attributed personal characteristics or status such as 'race', colour, language, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
In Spain, the 510 article of the Penal Code (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 1995) identifies hate crimes as
The incitement, direct or indirect, to hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence against a group, part of it or a specific person because they belong to that group, for racism, antisemitism or other reasons related to ideology, religion or beliefs, family situation, membership of their members to ethnicity, race or nation, their national origin, gender, sexual orientation or identity, gender reasons, illness or disability.
The 510 legal articles also describe a hate crime as “the possession and distribution of material that directly or indirectly promotes hostility against the groups or individuals previously defined and the denial or glorification of crimes against humanity committed during an armed conflict.” Therefore, in summary, the researchers define for this study, hate speech as any message that discriminates or encourages discrimination, humiliation, harassment, stigmatization or contempt for individuals or social groups with the characteristics or attributes defined by the laws.
Within this frame of reference, the research on hate speech has increased significantly in the last decade, as the emergence and consolidation of social networks have multiplied its spread and reach, promoting cyber hate and cyber racism that is becoming more and more explicit (Bustos Martínez et al., 2019). Nevertheless, hate speech is restricted on television because the editorial control over the broadcasted content is higher than in social networks. In Spain, the Union of Commercial Open Television (UTECA) maintains its commitment to the 2030 agenda promoted by the United Nations and has increased its non-tolerance policy about messages that encourage hate or inequality. In the First Barometer on the Perception of the Contribution of TV to Sustainable Development Goals (Deloitte, 2020), 58% of the surveyed population considers that “in free-to-air television, there is a greater control over the spread of content that incites violence and hate, than that at the Internet.” That is not a casual perception. In social networks, the user's speech is uncontrolled, and any person can take part anonymously, without filtering the tone or content, and with the freedom to hold their opinions on any subject. In television, otherwise, there are journalistic controls, and the audiovisual content is selected within a schedule and a programming grid that can restrict anonymous or violent interventions.
Free-to-air television remains a relevant media for sharing ideas. It reaches the most dispersed and educationally disadvantaged populations and creates a social imagination through a large number of people (Scheufele, 1999). Likewise, many of these viewers are part of “social TV”. So, they are social network users who search for content or share their opinions about what they see on television and online platforms, spreading their statements about hate speech. (Odunaiya et al., 2020). Even so, much of the hate speech forged on social networks is only known among small groups of users until other broadcasters communicate it. As a result, popular opinion is usually generated around the hate speech issue when it is discussed on television or in other mass media. For this reason, the social responsibility of television is even much higher (Roy, 2019).