The Netherlands State Commission against Discrimination and Racism has published an important new study, “Between Parliament, Newspapers, and Social Media,”.
It shows that statements made by politicians about population groups, reports in national newspapers, and responses from social-media users can influence and reinforce each other. Statements by politicians, such as speeches and interruptions, have a particularly stimulating effect: when they speak more frequently, more negatively, or in a discriminatory manner about population groups, similar expressions follow in the period thereafter, particularly on social media and, to a lesser extent, in newspapers. This systemic triangle dynamics of politicians – social media – newspapers creates the risk that discriminatory language in public debate will come to be seen as increasingly normal, even though discrimination on all grounds listed in Article 1 of the Netherlands Constitution is strictly prohibited.
One of the researchers and co-authors of the State Commission study is Gossa Lô. She did her master research at VU Amsterdam in ICT for Development (ICT4D). Her master thesis, “Exploring West African Folk Narrative Texts using Machine Learning”, is available from the Web alliance for Regreening in Africa (W4RA.org):
https://w4ra.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Lowres_Thesis_GossaLo_July2019.pdf
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