In an article in Público titled “Liberdade para odiar. Onde começa o discurso de ódio?” (“Freedom to hate. Where does hate speech begin?”), INESC-ID researcher Paula Carvalho shared insights about the complex and pervasive phenomenon of direct and indirect online hate speech.

Within the context of the EU-funded project Knowing Online Hate Speech (kNOwHATE), which includes Paula Carvalho and researchers from Iscte and IST-ID, the team has analysed the content, subtleties and propagation of thousands of messages directed against immigrants, racial/ethnic groups, and LGBTIQ communities.

With the rise of social media platforms and the rapid dissemination of information, understanding and addressing this phenomenon has become crucial for identifying, monitoring, and preventing online hate speech against these communities.

Read the full article (in PT) here.

*Paula Carvalho is a researcher at INESC-ID within the Information Systems Engineering research area, and an Invited Assistant Professor at Técnico, University of Lisbon. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of Natural Language Processing, Corpus Linguistics, and Computational Social Sciences. Currently, her research is particularly focused on the analysis and detection of information disorder on social media, including hate speech and conspiracy theories.