“The fight against hate speech proliferation during the Covid-19 pandemic” –Beatriz Buarque (TT20) by Oxford International Relations Society

As the Covid-19 pandemic rattles the world, invective and hate-infused comments have also been raging across the internet in the past several months. From websites to chat forums, online toxicity has reached to a new plateau. Twitter alone has seen a surge in hate speech directed towards China and the Chinese by almost tenfold, while there was a staggering increase in traffic to hate sites and specific posts against Asians by 200%, according to L1GHT, an AI start-up. Given the sheer amount of hate speech, cyberviolence, and general toxicity, given the erosion of trust and mutual respect in the international community, how will we ever be able to walk out of the Covid-19 shadow with any sense of assurance or hopefulness?

For our TT20 edition, The Beacon’s editor Patricia Zhai asked Beatriz Buarque how we got to a point where hate speech is being mass-produced at such an unprecedented scale, and how we may be able to turn the tide-- not by firing counter-speech--but by providing an alternative narrative to attenuate the echoes of hate.

Beatriz Buarque is the founder of Words Heal the World, an UK-based NGO that counters online extremism. She is also completing her PHD at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the massification of hate speech.

(Cover image credit to .coda at https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/exclusive-islamophobic-disinformation-and-hate-speech-has-swamped-social-media-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/)