The Network of Excellence of Training on Hate (NETHATE) Consortium is a Horizon 2020 MSCA-ITN aiming at exploring hate to support the development of a sustainable democratic culture across the European Union. The research and training programme will mobilise a multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral team whereby 15 early-stage researchers will engage with experts from academia, non-governmental organisations, public bodies, and the private sector. NETHATE’s key objectives are to examine the nature, spread, impacts and mitigation strategies of hate offline and online. Gender, sex and sexual orientation will represent cross-cutting elements throughout the NETHATE research.

Today, more than 4,5 billion people communicate through the Internet. Easy access, large audiences, anonymity and instantaneous publication of unfiltered contents all contribute to expeditious information spread and suggest new tools for large-scale influence. Online platforms have developed internal self-regulatory polices to counter hate speech and are regulating, presently, more speech content than any other system of governance since human rights law was created. Such private regulatory frameworks remain opaque, lack democratic enforcement and legal remedy mechanisms.

At eLaw Leiden University, we will contribute to Work Package No 2 of the NETHATE project, which focuses on Technology and Social Media. This research aims at conducting a fundamental rights analysis on how online platforms counter illegal or harmful speech through the deployment of digital technologies. More specifically, this work will seek to: 1) advance the legal conceptualisation of harm and hate speech; 2) systematize legal obligations in governing online hateful and harmful speech; 3) propose and evaluate from a human rights perspective new mitigation and enforcement designs, here in close cooperation with the University of Antwerp; and 4) study remedy mechanisms compliant with international human rights law.

This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network under the Grant Agreement No 861047.

• content regulation
• digital technologies
• freedom of expression
• hateful and harmful speech
• online platforms

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