Hate speech harms: a social justice discussion of disabled Norwegians’ experiences

Abstract

This article presents findings from a survey on hate speech reported by disabled people in Norway. Previous British and American research shows that disabled people are more likely than their non-disabled peers to be the victims of hate speech and hate crime. In our study, 38% reported at least one experience of hate speech during the previous 12 months. The respondents reported a wide range of consequences of hate speech related to psychological, social and societal issues. The findings reveal that people place restrictions on their own lives as a result of being exposed to hate speech, including raising their opinion in public debates. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, we discuss the mechanisms that prevent disabled people from participating in society on equal terms. We conclude that to combat hate speech, transformative strategies need to be applied.

Keywords:

• Disability
• hate speech
• participation
• survey data
• Norway

Acknowledgements

This study was carried out by Nordland Research Institute, Bodø, Norway, in cooperation with NTNU Social Research, Trondheim, Norway.

The authors thank researcher Kurt Elvegård of NTNU Social Research for his contributions to the study and data collection. They thank Professor Julie Beadle-Brown at The Tizard Centre, University of Kent, UK for sharing the questionnaire from her survey.

Preliminary versions of this article have been presented at two conferences: Lancaster Disability Studies Conference, 7 September 2016; and Nordic Network on Disability Research Conference, Örebro, 5 May 2017. The article has benefitted considerably from insightful comments by participants at these conferences.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs funded the research project.