“Today, hate speech has legal grounds; calls for violence are considered to be hate speech,” media expert Samvel Martirosyan said during a meeting at the Tesaket press club regarding hate speech, why and how it spreads, how it impacts internal political processes, and how it impacts society.
“The Internet is the perfect place for hate speech to spread because most people have the opportunity to share their thoughts publicly. This has never been so accessible before. On the other hand, people have had the ability to form groups and find like-minded people quickly, which takes a lot more time in the real world. All of this is what caused many countries to establish laws because it is obvious that hate speech will spread from the online world to the offline one sooner or late, which we have already seen,” he emphasized, adding that the majority of people who spread hate speech tend to have psychological issues.
“The main reason for this situation is the political situation. Tensions have not decreased over the past two years. For the past two years, we have been in pre-election processes, which has not helped to decrease tensions,” Samvel Martirosyan said. He added, “Fake pages are not the ones to blame for the spread of hate speech but the political elite on all sides. A culture for political fights has not been established yet, but the other problem has been the media, which does not moderate its social platforms.”
According to the expert, the European Union is carrying out negotiations with social networks, especially Facebook, so that there can be more control. Samvel Martirosyan said that hate speech on Facebook in Armenia is not controlled very well because it is beneficial for some people. The more comments there are under a particular post, the more visible it becomes.
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