Discriminatory Content in Social Web

The rapid growth of web technology and social networks has facilitated contact between

people from various countries, ethnicities, and cultures. While global media's benefits and

constructive out- comes are apparent, anonymity and mobility afforded by such media also

facilitated a massive degree of discriminatory content leading to considerable toxicity in the

online discourse and abusive behaviors. These incidents also have evolved into hate, bullying and

even materialized into real-world threats and attacks against individuals or groups. Furthermore,

the rapid dissemination of online content has made these harassment behaviors incredibly hazardous

and toxic, necessitating to handle these challenges by developing ways to reduce the harm caused by

hateful propaganda in cyberspace effectively.

One of the most critical challenges is dealing with the continuous flow of hate speech incidents re-

ported online worldwide. Hate speech can be defined as the act that disparages a person or people

based on a number of characteristics that may include and not limited to: race, ethnicity, sexual

orientation, gender, religion, and nationality. Hate speech is different from other sub-types

of offensive lan- guage and cyberbullying (which is carried out repeatedly and overtime against

vulnerable victims that cannot defend themselves). The impact of hate speech on social media is

hazardous, as it can lead to social conflict, discrimination, and even genocide. Hate speech also

has a variety of target types, cate- gories, and levels. It is beyond the scope of a single

doctoral thesis to treat a large chunk of the broad spectrum of hate speech in a substantial

manner. In this thesis, we choose to explore discrimination, especially gender-based

discrimination, i.e., sexism. Gender discrimination is defined as any situation in which an

individual is denied an opportunity or misjudged purely based on their gender. The charac-

teristics of gender discrimination are any situation where a person shows prejudice towards another

that would not occur if they were the opposite gender. Even though gender equality is present in

the social and political sphere, we still encounter aspects that are characteristic of sexism.

Such aspects impact upon gender inequality and different types of violence towards women.

The presence of women on online media has received increased attention.

The presence of women on online media has received increased attention in recent years, owing to

rising hate and violence directed at them. In general, sexist behaviors and discourses undervalue

the position of women. Inequality and sexism against women, which persist in society, are rapidly

being mirrored online. Gender disparities and sexist views are perpetuated, if not naturalized, on

the internet.