International symposium on hate speech

On 4 and 5 July 2024, the Peace Institute hosted an international scientific symposium on hate speech entitled “Hate Speech Intersections with Nationalism, Racism, Gender and Migration” at the Park Hotel in Ljubljana. Researchers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey discussed the definition of hate speech, the state and future of online hate speech moderation, the prosecutorial practice, intersections with the imaginary against the gendered Other, controversial symbols and war narratives. Using case studies from individual countries, we reflected on the links between prejudice, discrimination, everyday nationalisms and structural racism, and exclusionary policies. By presenting current research, the symposium opened a space for debates that address the contemporary challenge of polarisation of societies and contribute to a clearer conceptualisation of hate speech. Participants from different social science disciplines focused on selected examples of countries outside the usual “Western gaze”, thus creating a space for exchange, networking and the development of possible new scholarly collaborations in the wider Central Europe and Balkans region.