Hate Speech in New Media Environments: the Analysis of Youtube Videos Containing Hate Speech

New media environments are different from the traditional mass media in terms anonymity, interaction and user-generated contents. Along with the developments in information and communication technologies, new media environments offer the individuals the chance to be the user, producer and the distributer of the content. In this regard, the groups that cannot represent themselves in the traditional mass media get the the opportunity of visibility. However, this kind of freedom also causes the production and dissemination of hate speech due to the anonymity of the producer and the lack of control of a superior media. The user-generated contents that can explicitly and implicitly move around in new media environments lead to the circulation of a discriminatory and othering language throughout the Internet. As a video-sharing website, YouTube is one of the social media platforms that hate speech can easily spread. YouTube is the first website that became active in uploading, distributing and sharing videos. Every day millions of videos are offered to Internet users via YouTube and othering expressions in some of these videos justify hate speech in this new public sphere. In addition to the video contents, user comments also add to spread of hate speech. The aim of this study is to reveal what kind of anti-Islamic discursive practices are in circulation over Youtube as a media sharing website. For this reason, two videos on anti-Islamism which were published on YouTube in 2015 and in 2016 have been analysed in terms of Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis that Van Dijk has developed for the analysis of the news has been applied to YouTube interface and hate speech in video sharing networks has been examined according to the findings. Yeni medya ortamları geleneksel kitle iletişim araçlarından sahip oldukları anonimlik, etkileşim ve kullanıcı türevli içerik gibi özellikler bağlamında ayrılmaktadır. Bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinin gelişmesi ile birlikte yeni medya ortamları, bireye içeriğin kullanıcısı, üreticisi ve dağıtıcısı olma imkanı sunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, geleneksel kitle iletişim araçlarında temsil imkanı bulamayan gruplar görünürlük olanağı elde ederken sağlanan bu özgürlük iletilerin üreticisinin bilinmemesi ve üst bir medya organının denetiminden geçmemesi ekseninde nefret söyleminin üretilmesi ve dağılmasına neden olmaktadır. Yeni medya ortamlarında örtük ve açık biçimde dolaşım imkanı bulan kullanıcı türevli içerik