COMMENTS, HATE SPEECH, DISINFORMATION, AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION REGULATION

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

Zagreb, Croatia, Sheraton hotel, 16 and 17 September 2021

Technological development has brought rapid and simple spread of speech in professional and civic communication. The digital public space is a space of democratic freedoms for each individual, but it is often a space of numerous disinformation and fake news, concerning offensive speech and discriminatory speech targeting ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, immigrants, and various vulnerable groups. Readers’ comments can be an important form of argumentative civic debate, but they are also a way for citizens to express aggressive, inciting, or offensive attitudes toward others or use hate speech. Both media and other business entities on the internet encounter this phenomenon of digital communication and try to resist it in different ways. In the issues between freedom of speech and censorship of public speech, there is a daily intellectual struggle for the right to information, media freedom, internet neutrality. How should our legislation participate in this, what are the experiences of different national legal regulations? What does the struggle against disinformation and hate speech involve, is this fight a multidimensional task in the age of digital communication, which strategies are acceptable, which stakeholders should be involved and which place belongs to self-regulation and which to the regulatory system?

Topics to be covered:

  • Legal aspects and freedom of speech in the regulation of public communication
  • Fight against disinformation
  • Hate speech in the public media space
  • Hate speech in the citizens’ comments
  • Readers’ comments as a form of political participation
  • The impact of citizens’ comments on the journalistic profession
  • The impact of citizens’ comments on business in tourism and other professions
  • The role of self-regulation in regulating disinformation and unacceptable forms of speech
  • Methodological approaches in scientific research of misinformation and comments on the Internet (big data)
  • Network tools for collecting, analysing, and visualising online forms of discourse
  • Analysis of sentiment in offensive and insulting speech according to vulnerable groups

ORGANISERS:
Agency for Electronic Media: www.aem.hr 
Media Research: www.mediaresearch.cro.net

CO-ORGANISER:
Scientific Council for the Theatre, Film, Radio and Television of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: http://info.hazu.hr/hr/