Conference Program

In the contemporary social web, democratic coexistence and civic agency are increasingly challenged by polarization processes that may evolve into cultural wars (santerini, 2025) and hate speech (Pasta, 2018). The Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16 calls for particular attention to those forms of hate incitement which, while not reaching the threshold of criminal or civil liability, still threaten social cohesion and democratic stability. In this perspective, hate speech should not be understood only as an individual act of aggression, but as a phenomenon embedded in the communicative structures of platformized environments.

This contribution is situated within the research field of Postdigital Intercultures (Pasta & Zoletto, 2023), which investigates the challenges of living together, citizenship education, and social relations in the context of the everyday entanglement between sociocultural complexity and the plurality of languages, media, and environments characteristic of postdigital transformations. In highly mediatized societies, the relationships between individuals, communities, and socio-technical infrastructures become central to understanding how democratic participation and conflict are reshaped.

Contemporary forms of what may be defined as “hate speech onlife” are heterogeneous, yet they share common social and psychological dynamics that sustain hostility and antagonism. Investigating these dynamics is necessary in order to avoid naïve or purely moralistic approaches and to develop educational perspectives capable of addressing these phenomena in their cultural, social, and political dimensions. Alongside critical thinking, a cornerstone of media education, the co-authorial nature of the social web calls for an education to responsibility, understood as the ability to evaluate the consequences of one’s actions within mediated public spaces.

The category of hate speech can be described as “ambiguous but useful” (Pasta, 2025). Its ambiguity derives from the difficulty of defining clear boundaries between legitimate expression, offensive speech, and incitement to hatred, yet it remains a productive analytical lens for investigating the relationship between digital media, democratic life, and what has been defined as “citizenship onlife” (Pasta & Rivoltella, 2022).

The analysis develops along three main lines.
First, the paper examines some characteristics of digital environments that facilitate processes of targeting, stigmatization, and polarization. Algorithmic personalization, visibility metrics, virality mechanisms, and the persistence of content contribute to the selection of enemies and the formation of antagonistic publics, favoring emotional intensification and identity construction through opposition.

Second, the paper considers the transformation of hate discourse in the age of post-truth. In polluted information environments, the distinction between true and false becomes less relevant than the capacity of messages to mobilize emotions and reinforce group belonging. Irony, provocation, denial of responsibility, and claims of not being serious often function as discursive strategies that allow hostile expressions to circulate while avoiding accountability.

Third, the contribution outlines some educational directions aimed at countering online hate without reducing the issue to moral regulation or technical control. Strengthening civic agency requires developing awareness of the socio-technical conditions that shape communication, fostering critical reflection on the emotional and relational dimensions of online interaction, and promoting education to responsibility as a key competence for democratic life in postdigital societies.