Dr. Vasja Vehovar, a member of the Centre for Social Informatics, and Dr. Dejan Jontes, from the Research Centre for the Terminology of Social Sciences and Journalism, have published an article "Hateful and Other Negative Communication in Online Commenting Environments: Content, Structure and Targets" in the journal Acta Informatica Pragensia.
The article focuses on the concept of socially unacceptable discourse, which is the basis of an empirical study in which comments on the Facebook pages of the three most visited Slovenian news outlets were evaluated. Machine learning algorithms were used to narrow the focus to topics related to refugees and LGBT rights.
The results show that about half of the comments are socially unacceptable. In addition, most of these comments could also be considered a potential violation of hate speech legislation.