Thesis advisor: Geoffrey Sanzenbacher / Oddly, as acceptance of LGBT+ individuals continues to rise in the United States, the number of reported anti-LGBT+ hate crimes also rises (McCarthy 2022, Author’s calculations from Uniform Crime Reporting data). Could this be the result of a violent backlash against the legalization of same-sex marriage? This paper investigates this love-hate relationship using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s Uniform Crime Reporting system. Utilizing a collection of difference-in- differences regressions, this analysis compares the number of reported anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in a state before and after that state’s legalization of same sex marriage. The results suggest that states have a higher number of reported hate crimes per month after their legalization of same-sex marriage when controlling for population. A placebo regression shows that this effect is not found with other kinds of hate crimes. Two potential explanations for this finding are explored: firstly, that reporting of anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in a state becomes more reliable after that state’s legalization of same-sex marriage or, alternatively, that the number of hate crimes committed against LGBT+ individuals rises. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

Criminological Aspects of Hate Crime Abstract Hate crime refers to a set of crimes committed for a prejudicial motive against a group of people for their essential personality characteristics such as nationality, religion, or sexual orientation. Topicality of the issue stems from the fact that related social phenomena such as racism, xenophobia, radicalisation, or discrimination of minorities are far from being satisfactorily dealt with even in Western society. The fundamental goal of this thesis is to provide the reader with a comprehensive criminological view of hate crimes in the territory of the Czech Republic. Main findings include the following: the concept of hate crime is not unified in theory nor legislation in terms of protected characteristics, which negatively translates into research and policy of hate crime. The quantity of registered crime is in the order of less than 200 crimes per year, its trend is downward, and its structure is predominantly non-violent; unfortunately, it is also accompanied by high latency. The Czech perpetrator is usually male and a repeat offender, in early adulthood, with a basic education and without a factual relationship to extremist groups. Victims of violent forms of hate crime are, in principle, suffering more intense harm (especially psychological) than victims...

According to the hate group watchdog organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the United States rose 54 percent since 2000 (SPLC 2009 a & b). Literature on organized white supremacist groups suggests that women have become increasingly more important to such groups for a variety of reasons, many of which are not always agreed upon by and within said groups. In addition, it is believed by many in the hate monitoring world that the World Wide Web has become progressively more dynamic as a medium of recruitment, as a tool of communication among members, and as a means to propagate the hateful messages espoused by members of these groups. Thus, this research will marry two essential ideas: (1) that women are being sought out and targeted for recruitment by organized white supremacist groups and (2) that the World Wide Web acts as a dynamic tool that aids said groups in accomplishing their goals of recruitment.

Yes / What’s wrong with human rights discourse and equality legislation is their creation under the guise of neutrality. The practice of human rights and equality sit within administration systems that are in general sites of production and implementation of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia and ableism. Whilst the people subject to these types of discrimination fight hard and make sacrifices to win the inclusion of their rights, whilst such privileges sit within archaic systems - can they ever be anything more than a temporary respite from oppression not a resolution?

COINTELPRO was a formidable and extremely controversial counterintelligence program conducted by the FBI from 1956 to 1971. Its exposure showcased the covert methods in which the FBI targeted US citizens it identified as threats to the internal and domestic security of the United States. Since the program's end, the FBI continues to explore and identify the current and potential threats to the United States. However, what exactly does this program say about the FBI at the time of its inception and what does it say about how it had classified threats? And what could it tell us about how it classifies threats today? This study examines how the FBI treated two identified targets of COINTELPRO, "black extremists" and "white hate groups", and whether the differences found between the treatment of the two targets as threats was a result of internal or external institutional factors. In conducting such study, I seek to determine if the factors that influence the Bureau's threat classification may have either been internal, a result of the Directors' influence or the influence of the organization's structure, culture, and/or function, or external, a result of the President's or Congress' influence. I hypothesize that the differing treatment of these targets, where "black extremists" were identified and prioritized as more of a threat than "white hate groups", was a result of internal institutional factors within the Bureau. Within this study, I examine reports and memos from the FBI database, the Vault, from 1968, to best determine which hypothesis is more accurate. / Master of Arts / COINTELPRO was a domestic counterintelligence conducted by the FBI from 1956 to 1971 that targeted American citizens deemed to be a threat to the internal security of the U.S. that were engaging in, in what the Bureau identified as, subversive activity. This program was controversial as it targeted American citizens using covert methods without the knowledge of the President, Congress, and the American public. Since the program's end, the FBI continues to identify and address domestic threats facing the United States today. However, what can this program tell us about how the FBI identified and classified threats during this time? And what can this tell us about how it addresses threats today? This study seeks to understand how the FBI treated two groups within COINTELPRO, "black extremists" and "white hate groups" and what factors may have influenced the treatment of these targets. In conducting such study, I seek to determine if the factors that influence the Bureau's threat classification may have either been internal, a result of the Directors' influence or the influence of the organization's structure, culture, and/or function, or external, a result of the President's or Congress' influence. I propose these two hypotheses and suggest that it is more likely that internal factors shaped the Bureau's threat classification and differing treatment of these groups. Within this study, I examine reports and memos from the FBI database, the Vault, from 1968 to determine which hypothesis is more accurate.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2018-05-10T12:55:18Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Denis Augusto Carneiro Lobo.pdf: 2377689 bytes, checksum: ec66c81fcf1d6584b5311171b0eae5c2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-10T12:55:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Denis Augusto Carneiro Lobo.pdf: 2377689 bytes, checksum: ec66c81fcf1d6584b5311171b0eae5c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This master’s thesis analyses the constitution of the so-called Hate Speech in Digital Social Networks (DSNs), specifically, on Facebook. Starting from users’ text interactions in public Facebook pages of the 2014 presidential candidates Dilma Rousseff (Workers Party) and Aécio Neves (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) during the presidential run (August to October 2014), I’ve searched for the characterization of this phenomena within a political-party polarization scenario. Focusing in the political constitution of the referred phenomena, I’ve then evidenced the difference between the legal concept of Hate Speech and a more widespread phenomena, which worked in this scenario as a political component of the social interactions: the political hate. Furthermore, the debate gets centralized in the mediation process of social interactions in an Instant Communication Technology (ICTs) scenario, in search of a confluence with the Latin American studies about the process of technological and communicational mediation, its diferences and implications in an Interactional Sociology. Finally, having analysed such studies as a theorical and methodological background, I've presented a discussion about the importance of the new computational techniques such as "filter bubbles", "social bots" and User Experience (UX) in the daily life of today's liberal democracies, leading the debate to the establishment of "fear techniques", clearly an expression of the so-called "Fear Culture", to which many authors refeer today / Esta dissertação analisou a constituição do chamado Discurso de Ódio nas Redes Sociais Digitais (RSDs), mais especificamente no Facebook. Partindo das interações textuais dos usuários nas páginas públicas dos candidatos à Presidência da República no ano de 2014, Dilma Rousseff (PT) e Aécio Neves (PSDB), durante o pleito eleitoral (agosto a outubro de 2014), buscou-se a caracterização desse fenômeno dentro de um cenário de polarização político-partidária. Voltando o olhar para a constituição política do fenômeno em questão, buscou-se a diferenciação da figura jurídica do Discurso de Ódio de um fenômeno mais capilar, que funcionou como componente político das interações societárias nesse cenário: o ódio político. Além disso, centralizamos o debate nas interações sociais e na mediação das Tecnologias de Comunicação Instantânea (TCIs), buscando uma confluência com o pensamento latino-americano sobre os processos de mediação tecnológica e comunicacional e suas diferenciações e implicações em uma Sociologia Interacionista. Buscou-se também, a partir desse arcabouço teórico-metodológico, discutir os pesos das novas técnicas computacionais, como a “bolha de filtros”, os “social bots”, “fake news” e as técnicas de User Experience (UX) no cotidiano das democracias liberais atuais, direcionando o debate para o estabelecimento de “técnicas do medo”, visivelmente assentados na chamada “Cultura do Medo”, a qual muitos pesquisadores recorrem na atualidade

(in English): This diploma thesis aims to find out whether there is a higher occurrence of vulgarity in discussions where users are anonymous than in non-anonymous discussions. The text of the thesis presents the concept of anonymity and the concept of hate speech and puts them in the context of the Internet environment and online discussions forums. The individual phenomena and their contexts are presented using selected relevant studies. The thesis also deals with the issue of the presence of a conflict topic in the discussions as a potential factor influencing their nature in the matter of civility and vulgarity. Then follows a practical part, which is based on an original research. This part starts with a description of methodology and the preparation of the survey, and then presents the results and their interpretation. The research analyzes a sample of 1,200 discussion comments divided into two groups anonymous and non-anonymous. These are comments on articles on news sites. The results then describe not only the effect of anonymity on the amount of vulgar and uncivil comments in discussion forums but also the influence of the presence of a conflict topic. The interpretation of results also includes a comparison with foreign research (Santana, 2014).

<p>This dissertation is a collection of three papers. Each paper constitutes a chapter. Each chapter empirically examines an aspect of bias-motivated behavior in the United States. </p> <p>The first chapter studies the impact of penalty enhancement statutes by state legislatures on the incidence of hate crimes in the United States. Penalty enhancements may deter crime, however, the passing of such laws may also increase awareness among law enforcement officials and increase arrests. Using administrative data on hate crimes and a difference-in-differences method that leverages state-level variation in the introduction of legislation, this paper does not find a significant effect of the state enactment of penalty enhancement statutes on hate-crime incidence rates. </p> <p>The second chapter examines whether election timing and election outcomes affect the incidence of crimes motivated by hate and intolerance. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design that compares election with non-election years, I show that hate crimes increase by an average of 28 percent in the three weeks around a US presidential election. This effect is larger in recent presidential elections and when there is no incumbent candidate. Second, using a similar design and cross-state variation in the timing of gubernatorial elections, I find no evidence that these state-level elections affect hate-crime incidence. Third, using regression-discontinuity designs based on vote counts, I find that the number of hate crimes is not affected by presidential or gubernatorial election outcomes. </p> <p>The third chapter studies the impact of presidential and gubernatorial election timing on the level of toxicity present on social media platforms such as Twitter. Together with Sameer Borwankar, I empirically determine the extent to which the toxicity of Twitter content changes during election times as compared to non-election times. We randomly sample Twitter users and collect all tweets made by this sample around election time. We use a difference-in-differences identification leveraging election and non-election years. We further focus on toxic content that is motivated by political polarization and examine various bias-motivation categories that come up in this content as well as the variation in the intensity of toxicity between national and local election times.  </p> <p><br></p>

Research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Studies. March 2015 / This paper examines race and class schisms among South African LGBTI persons using the lens of hate crimes legislation. While much praise is given to South Africa’s constitutional framework which provides for non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, LGBTI persons still face unacceptably high levels of violence and victimisation. An ongoing trend of violent murders of black lesbian women in particular has mobilised advocacy by LGBTI organisations and other civil society actors to call for hate crimes legislation. This paper takes a critical look at hate crimes legislation and the potential problems of its application in a society with gross inequality and power discrepancies. This critique has as its foundation an acknowledgement that action needs to be taken to address the scourge of violence, while at the same time understanding the intersectionality of oppression and the uneven results achieved by liberal legal reform.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. / "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of doctor of philosophy in the Department of History." Discipline: History; Department/School: History.