ABSTRACT
This chapter advocates taking a discursive and rhetorical psychology approach to the serious problem of online hate speech. The chapter begins by illustrating the prevalence and severity of online hate. It will be shown that, despite being a serious problem, there are difficulties in determining which comments can be considered particularly problematic or inflammatory. This is due to the ambiguity of what counts as prejudice and the likelihood of commenters denying that their comments constitute prejudice. It is therefore essential for research to be undertaken to address and understand how hate speech can be identified and defined so that it can be addressed. An argument is made for applying discursive/rhetorical methodologies to examine the issues around hate speech and social media. This chapter therefore reviews existing rhetorical and discursive work around online hate speech across different areas of victimisation, including disability, sexuality, misogyny and race-based hate. The latter is illustrated with an extended example of an analysis of online interactions around “Black Lives Matter”. Finally, we argue for the need to take an interactional approach to addressing online hate.
