Analyzing Dangerous Speech, Hate Speech and Offensive Speech in Romanian and Hungarian Public Facebook Contexts using Computational Sociology Approaches
The ADHOC research project aims to use digital social research methodology to create an overview of the issue of hate speech on public Facebook contexts through a comparative analysis of Romanian and Hungarian Facebook Fan pages and associated comment threads. The proposal is anchored in computational sociology methodology to provide a large-scale data-driven analysis of contexts, emitters, contents and targets of dangerous speech, hate speech and offensive speech in social media with generalizable results and evidence that could drive policy in the matter. The analyzed samples include news outlets, satirical websites, social entertainment communities, political parties, governmental institutions and non-governmental organizations, activist groups. Data collection of a set estimated at 15-20 million posts and subsequent comments will be automated by using Facebook Open Graph API interrogation. The ADHOC mixed methods approach combines quantitative discourse analysis techniques, co-occurrence analysis with in-depth qualitative approaches to better understand multimodal content, tone and context of the prominent identified hate speech acts.
Identifying the most popular or most relevant Facebook Fan Pages in the Romanian and Hungarian linguistic contexts in different categories – entertainment, news media, politics (governmental, non-governmental, activist), brands, communities or sports.
Analyzing the posts of each selected Facebook Fan Page in terms of type, time-frame, topic and engagement through comments, reactions and shares.
Identifying and classifying terms and phrases in Romanian and Hungarian that point towards antagonistic speech into dangerous speech, hate speech and offensive speech.
Identifying and classifying references to groups which are often targeted by dangerous speech, hate speech and offensive speech in messages or comments.
Analyzing the co-occurrence of references to target groups with different types of antagonistic speech in Facebook comments aiming to identify emitters, targets, content, context (including temporal).
Comparing the findings for the Romanian and Hungarian linguistic contexts and putting them into perspective regarding previous findings in the region and in the respective countries.
Normative and political concepts:
Free speech, Hate speech, Vulnerable group, Protected group, Hate crime, Bias against a member of community, Bias motivated crime, Prejudice against a member of community, Incitement against community, Right-wing extremism, Intolerance, Discrimination, Harassment, Solidarity and cohesion in society
Theoretical concepts
Speech act, Antagonistic speech, Offensive speech, Dangerous speech, Social group, Stereotype, Prejudice, Insult, Slur, Network agenda setting
Methodological concepts:
Niche dictionary, Semantic network, Similarity analysis, Co-occurrence network, Community detection, Discursive patterns, Text mining, Text classification
Conceptual Framework Working Notes
Identified targets of hate speech in Romania & Hungary
Ethnic and national minorities: Roma, [Hungarians/Romanians], Szeklers, Jews, Germans, Transylvanian Saxons
Migrants, refugees, asylum seekers
LGBTQ+ groups
Religious, non-religious, atheists, neoprotestant, Muslim
People with disabilities
Other vulnerable groups: welfare recipients, pensioners, unemployed, homeless, women, old/young persons
State of the Art on Computational Methods
Summary on Hate Speech - Working notes
The corpus databases containing samples of antagonistic Facebook comments extracted from Romanian and Hungarian Public Facebook pages for the 2016-2017 time-frame will be published on the project website during the first and second stage of the project.
Purposeful sample: 1.94 M Records
Politicians, media & parties RO+HU posts & comments
Main sample: ~ 3.18 M records RO | HU
Politicians, media & parties RO+HU posts & comments
Total records: ~5 Million
Researchers interested in access to the datasets should contact Radu Meza (meza@fspac.ro)
1. Radu MEZA, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Andreea MOGOȘ - A Digital Social Science Approach to Studying Hate Speech on Facebook in Romania and Hungary. Communicative Space - Political Space: CEECOM - http://ceecom2018.hu/ - - 11th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference, Szeged, Hungary May 30-June 1 2018
2. Andreea MOGOȘ - The self-representations of the Romanian politicians on Facebook.Roles, frames and social media engagement, sent for publication in CEECOM 2018 Proceedings
Communicative Space - Political Space: CEECOM - http://ceecom2018.hu/ - - 11th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference, Szeged, Hungary May 30-June 1 2018
3. Radu MEZA, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Andreea MOGOȘ - Analysing dangerous, hateful and offensive speech in social media comments, HumaNUM - http://humanum.fspac.online/ - Information, Communication et Humanités Numériques, 23e Colloque Franco-Roumain en Sciences de l'information et de la Communication, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, October 18-20 2018
4. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE - Discursive Patterns in Social Media Posts and Comments on the Facebook Pages of Institutions. A Comparative Analysis of Romania and Hungary, Transylvanian International Conference in Public Administration -https://www.apubb.ro/intconf/, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
5. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, The Algorithmisation of the Public Sphere: The Tropics of Social Media Discourse and the Transcoded Public in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Journalism and Digital Media Conference, Media Culture Days, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, May 2019
6. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Pointing Fingers. Stereotyping and Patterns of Meaning in Xenophobic Discourses on Social Media in Romania and Hungary, Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference - CEECOM 2019, Sofia, Bulgaria, June 2019.
7. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Networked Antagonisms in Central and Eastern Europe. Hate Speech in Comments to News Media Facebook Posts in Romania and Hungary, 5th World Journalism Education Congress, Paris, France, July 2019.
8. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Taking Names. Patterns of Meaning and Stereotyping of Social Categories in Antagonistic Discourses on Social Media in Romania and Hungary, European Sociological Association Conference 2019, Manchester, UK, August 2019.
9. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Fickle crowds. Discursive Patterns of Media, Public Figures and Citizens on Social Media in Romania and Hungary, ECREA'S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SECTION INTERIM CONFERENCE POLCOMM, Poznan, Poland, September 2019.
10. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, H pour Haine : l'imaginaire violent des Roumains et Hongrois et la recherche d'identité par violence verbale dans les rencontres abrasives sur les Pages Facebook, „De l’Ouest à l’Est : Métamorphoses des Discours en Europe” International Conference, București, October 2019.
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
Computational Research Methods in Communications ADHOC research workshop was organized on September 28 2019 in conjunction with Médiastaféta 2019 to present and discuss methodology (from co-occurrence analysis to machine learning based on word embeddings) and an overview the results in order to check assumptions and receive input from peers in the field of communication science research (from Romania and Hungary): Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Pécs University, Szeged University, Sapientia University in Târgu Mureș, Sapientia University in Miercurea Ciuc, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.
1. Meza, R., Vincze, H.O. and Mogoș, A., 2018. Targets of Online Hate Speech in Context. A Comparative Digital Social Science Analysis of Comments on Public Facebook Pages from Romania and Hungary. Intersections -East European Journal of Society and Politics, pp.26-50.
2. Vincze, Hanna Orsolya, Radu Meza, and Delia Cristina Balaban. "Frame Variation in the News Coverage of the Refugee Crisis: The Romanian Perspective." East European Politics and Societies (2020): 0888325419890665.
3. Meza, Radu; Meza, Șerban. A Triadic Formal Concept Analysis Approach to Analyzing Online Hate Speech in Facebook Comments. BRAIN - Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience- ISSN:2067-3957, Issue 1, Volume 10, 2019
4. Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Disparaging “the Assisted”: Shaming and Blaming Social Welfare Recipients in Romania and Hungary, chapter under review in Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe, Palgrave.
5. Mogos Andreea Alina, Meza Radu-Mihai, Vincze Hanna Orsolya, Discursive Patterns on the Facebook Pages of Government Institutions. A Comparative Analysis of Romania and Hungary, Pages: 374 - 386, Year: 2019, Proceedings Title: Sustainable Development and Resilience of Local Communities and Public Sector Organizations, Conference: Transylvanian International Conference in Public Administration 16-18 November 2018 Cluj-Napoca .
6. Meza, R.M., Antagonismele online, chapter in Digitalizarea media și cultura populară, editor R.M. Meza, Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2019, ISBN 978‐606‐37‐0580‐9, pp. 66-72.
7. Radu MEZA, Andreea MOGOȘ, Hanna-Orsolya VINCZE, Taking Names. Patterns of Meaning and Stereotyping of Social Categories in Antagonistic Discourses on Social Media in Romania and Hungary, abstract în Abstract Book 14th ESA Conference | Europe and Beyond: Boundaries, Barriers and Belonging | 20-23 August 2019 | Manchester, ISBN 978-2-9569087-0-8, p. 445
8.Radu MEZA, Analiza media. De la gândirea critică la gândirea computațională, Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2020. ISBN 978-606-37-0771-1/978-606-37-0772-8
Grant Director
Associate Professor
Experienced Researcher
Associate Professor
Experienced Researcher
Associate Professor
May 2018
30 May - 1June 2018
Szeged, Hungary
2 paper presentations
1. A Digital Social Science Approach to Studying Hate Speech on Facebook in Romania and Hungary
2. The self-representations of the Romanian politicians on Facebook.Roles, frames and social media engagement
May-September 2018
May-June 2018 selection & collection of purposeful sample
Politicians, media & parties RO+HU posts & comments DB ~2M Records
July-September 2018 selection of popularity sample
300 Facebook pages in Romanian
300 Facebook pages in Hungarian
September-November 2018
Public figures: RO+HU posts & comments DB ~2 M Records
Media institutions: RO+HU posts & comments DB ~1.02 M Records
Political parties: RO+HU posts & comments DB ~ M Records
Governmental institutions: RO+HU posts & comments DB ~ M Records
October 19 2018
Cluj-Napoca
HumaNum Conference, Cluj-Napoca
August-November 2018
2 articles sent for publication:
Targets of Online Hate Speech in Context. A Comparative Digital Social Science Analysis of Comments on Public Facebook Pages in Romanian and Hungarian
Is the Eastern European Perspective that Different? Frame Variation in the Romanian News Coverage of the Refugee Crisis
1 article accepted for publication
A Triadic Formal Concept Analysis Approach to Analyzing Online Hate Speech in Facebook Comments
November 16-17 2018
Cluj-Napoca
Transylvania International Conference in Public Administration
1 presentation
November-December 2018
Phase 1 (Conceptual Framework and Methodology) Reporting
January-February 2019
Data collected through Facebook API interrogation (first 25 comments in each thread on the pages of Public Figures, Political Parties, Political Communities and Media Outlets in both Romania and Hungary)
RO DB - Media Outlets ~ 1.5 M comments
RO DB - Political Communities ~ 0.4 M Comments
RO DB - Political Parties ~ 0.2 M Comments
RO DB - Public Figures ~ 2 M Comments
HU DB - Media Outlets ~ 1.5 M comments
HU DB - Political Communities ~ 0.49 M Comments
HU DB - Political Parties ~ 0.19 M Comments
HU DB - Public Figures ~ 2.1 M Comments
March-May 2019
The ADHOC team investigated the datasets and formulated analyses and presentation proposals for several international conferences in 2019.
May 2019
June 2019
Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference - CEECOM 2019, Sofia, Bulgaria
July 2019
August 2019
European Sociological Association Conference 2019, Manchester, UK
September 2019
ECREA'S POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SECTION INTERIM CONFERENCE POLCOMM, Poznan, Poland
August-October 2019
Book Chapter - Accepted
October 2019
„De l’Ouest à l’Est : Métamorphoses des Discours en Europe” International Conference, București
January - February 2020
Final revisions
March-April 2020
Book in Romanian incorporating methodological insights on computational social science gained from work on ADHOC project.
March-April 2020
Evaluation of Project Results
Final Report
Departamentul de Jurnalism și Media digitală
Facultatea de Științe Politice, Administrative și ale Comunicării
Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca
Str. Traian Moșoiu, nr 71, cod poștal: 400132
Grant director:
Associate Professor Radu Meza, Ph.D.
meza@fspac.ro