Based on a report looking at hate and dangerous speech on Facebook in Sri Lanka - http://www.cpalanka.org/liking-violence-a-study-of-hate-speech-on-facebook-in-sri-lanka/

1. Liking violence
A study of hate speech on Facebook in Sri Lanka

8. Targets
• Women, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and
queer communities, Christians and especially the
evangelical Christian community, NGOs, rights
activists, politicians from minority communities and
even, tellingly, Buddhist priests who support
religious harmony.

9. The report
• 10 August 2013: A Muslim prayer centre, the
Masjid Deenul Islam on Swarna Chaithya Road in
Grandpass, Colombo
• 15 June 2014: The violence in Aluthgama directed
against the Muslim community
• 20 Facebook pages, including first 10 comments
on key posts at the time of the study

13. Aluthgama
• In August 2014, the Secretary General of the
United Nations Ban Ki-moon noted that he was
“alarmed by the rising level of attacks in Sri Lanka
against religious minorities…” and “concerned that
Buddhist communities are being swept up by a
rising tide of extremist sentiment against other
groups.”

15. Why
• better understand the content produced online in
support or defence of extremism,
• the patterns that form between extremist pages and
voices therein,
• common characteristics of hate speech used to
garner support for extremism,
• explore the identities of the groups or people
behind the production of the content,

18. Working definitions
• A powerful speaker with influence over an audience;
• An audience vulnerable to incitement;
• Content of the speech that may be taken as
inflammatory or inciteful;
• A conducive social and historical context of the
speech; and
• An influential means of disseminating the speech.

19. Key points
• “Hate speech” on the Internet is a global concern
and with no kill-switch solution.
• The growth of content creation and consumption
online, wider and deeper than any other media in
the country and at an accelerated pace, has also
resulted in low risk, low cost and high impact online
spaces to spread hate, harm and hurt against
specific communities, individuals or ideas.

20. Key points
• Content predominantly in Sinhala
• Requires context to understand and address
• Age group is 24 - 35, on many pages as low as 18
• Fans are similar to each other - a high degree of
homophily / echo chambers / the world filtered
through news-feeds of friends

21. Key points
• Platform level algorithmic frameworks to identify
and block hateful and harmful content often fail,
simply because they flag too many false positives
(content erroneously flagged as hate speech) or
allow so much of hate speech to pass through (in
Sinhala) that their core purpose rendered irrelevant.

22. Key points
• Even the most offensive anti-Muslim sentiments
and statements have a growing audience and
following in web based social media
• Social media content has a greater ‘virality’ and a
‘long-tail’
• Content is largely visual in nature, appealing to
(and possibly created by) a demographic as young
as 18 (who are still in school)

23. Key points
• Anti-Muslim hate speech is generally, qualitatively
more vicious than anti-LTTE sentiments even at the
height of war
• Numbers of those joining these groups shows no
discernible decline
• High level of sophistication and planning around
content production and online virality suggests
individual pages could be part of larger, strategic
group efforts

24. Key points
• SM content augments rumours, a dominant form of
discourse under authoritarian regimes.
• Facebook content is perceived as more trustworthy,
independent (filtered through ‘friends’).

25. Some
examples
From the Bodu Bala Sena
communities / networks on
Facebook

42. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• Education
• Present content as being educational, professing to
provide true facts and figures where other forms of
media do not.

43. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• ‘Denialism’
• Claims that certain events either did not happen or
have been exaggerated.

44. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• Building Group Solidarity
• Calls to protect the group, and in particular the
most vulnerable within the group, women and
children.

45. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• Hero Narrative
• Bolstering members' self-esteem by giving them
opportunities to think of themselves as heroes in
defence of their group.

46. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• Nationalism / Patriotism
• Portraying hate mongers as defenders of their
nation, and by positioning groups they consider to
be outsiders as the enemy.

47. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• Scare Tactics
• This occurs primarily through describing the
situation Sinhala Buddhists are in portraying them
as a very small group with only Sri Lanka to live in.
A sense of urgency.

48. Leitmotifs of hate speech
• ‘Othering’
• Portraying the ‘Other’ in ways that emphasise
difference - making them seem strange, even
inhuman.

49. Addressing the issue
• Two key challenges present themselves in relation to
hate speech (Benesch):
1. To identify unlawful speech, and especially to
distinguish it from political speech, which constitutes
the exercise of a human right, and which is
essential for democratic functioning at all times…
2. To find best practices for limiting the
dangerousness of such speech, without curbing the
exercise of freedom of expression

50. Addressing the issue
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), Pakistan, Australia, Malaysia,
Singapore, Sri Lanka

51. Recommendations
• counter-messaging: Buddhists Questioning the
Bodu Bala Sena, Not In Our Name initiative, Mixed
Riced initiative, Rally for Unity page on Facebook
• if you can understand network dynamics, you can
act in a timely manner to curtail negativity

52. Recommendations
• more sustained monitoring of SM hate speech
trends, so as to create early warning mechanisms
that alert relevant authorities and civil society
stakeholders around heightened tensions online
that could explode into, or exacerbate, real world
violence

53. Recommendations
• digital media literacy campaigns for children,
youth, parents, teachers, community leaders,
clergy

54. Recommendations
• editorial policies that also, on principle, disallow
defamatory and inflammatory content from the
institution’s articles, columns and broadcasts

55. Recommendations
• ‘Anti-Hate Speech Pledge’ for politicians and
political parties, Dr. Tarlach McGonagle’s work on
addressing online hate speech in Europe
(expanded to corporate entities, civil society
institutions)

56. Observations
• The issue is not the non-existence of relevant legal
frameworks, but their non-application or selective
application.
• Correlation however isn’t causation: Imagined
violence has not yet, with same ferocity, translated
into real violence.

57. Observations
• The growth of hate speech online in Sri Lanka does
not guarantee another pogrom.
• It does however pose a range of other challenges
to government and governance around social,
ethnic, cultural and religious co-existence, diversity
and, ultimately, to the very core of debates around
how we see and organise ourselves post-war.
• Ideational justification key foundation for real world
violence

58. Thank you
www.cpalanka.org | bit.ly/hatespeechsl