Annotating for Hate Speech: The MaNeCo Corpus and Some Input from Critical Discourse Analysis

Understand

This paper presents a novel scheme for the annotation of hate speech in corpora of Web 2.0 commentary.

• The proposed scheme is motivated by the critical analysis of posts made in reaction to news reports on the Mediterranean migration crisis and LGBTIQ+ matters in Malta, which was conducted under the auspices of the EU-funded C.O.N.T.A.C.T.
• project.
• Based on the realization that hate speech is not a clear-cut category to begin with, appears to belong to a continuum of discriminatory discourse and is often realized through the use of indirect linguistic means, it is argued that annotation schemes for its detection should refrain from directly including the label 'hate speech,' as different annotators might have different thresholds as to what constitutes hate speech and what not.