Recontextualization of Hate Speech as an appropriation and positioning process in social media

Abstract Summary

Abstract :

When critics become hate speakers.







Thoughts on the discursive expansion of frames of interpretation in the context of brutalization







The reporting from online portals of traditional media (including television and print formats) conveys a rather impressive finding: brutalization is a current problem of our society.







At the same time, in public perception brutalization is closely associated with language. This "brutalized language" appears primarily on the Internet, according to the widespread view.







However, what so far has only appeared sporadically in the discourse has crystallized into a serious tendency since YouTuber Rezo published a "destruction video" shortly before the European elections: the attempt to disqualify every counter-proposal as brutalization or hate speech without any content-related debate. There can be different motives for this. I am particularly interested in the causal return to the place of publication: social media platform.







In my lecture I would like to use the Rezo discourse to show, among other things, that a long obsolete dichotomy between two supposedly separate worlds of discourse (online vs. offline) is artificially maintained and talk about the consequences. In this context, it is important for me to work out how problematic it is for a discourse culture to subsume constructive criticism under Hate Speech.

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