Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give is a young adult novel that covers controversial topics such as racism and police violence. In this essay, the concept of immersion is used to examine how the novel and its 2018 film counterpart adaptation differ in examining these topics. I claim that the film and novel versions operate through different methods of immersion. The novel mainly operates by immersion through characterization, while the film often prioritizes immersion through setting. In both cases, references are used to create immersion by grounding the novel within real historical eventhappenings and relevant contemporary discourse. Furthermore, this essay shows that highlighting factors of immersion, history, and contemporary discourse, while working with adaptation in practice, can lead to a more productive way of working with racially aware literature in the EFL classroom.

In today’s society there is a large number of social media users that are free to express their opinion on shared platforms. The socio-cultural differences between the people behind those accounts (in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, politics, . . . ) give rise to an important percentage of online discussions that make use of offensive language, which often affects in a negative way the psychological well-being of the victims. In order to address the problem, the endless stream of user-generated content engenders a need to find an accurate and scalable solution to detect offensive language using automated methods. This thesis explores different approaches to the offensiveness detection task focusing on five different languages: Arabic, Danish, English, Greek and Turkish. The results obtained using Support Vector Machines (SVM), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) are compared, achieving state-of-the-art results with some of the methods tested. The effect of the embeddings used, the dataset size, the class imbalance percentage and the addition of sentiment features are studied and analysed, as well as the cross-lingual capabilities of pre-trained multilingual models.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten experience threats and hate and if these things vary depending on if the affected journalist is a woman or a man. This study also aims to examine how these threats and the hate affect the opinion-forming journalists in both an emotional and a professional way. To strengthen the analysis this study is based on four theoretical frameworks. Strömbäcks theories support analyzes about self-censorship and the opinion-forming journalists' importance for democracy. Butler's theories about hate-speech describe how hate-speech can be expressed and affect the receiver. Lazarus and Folkman contribute with a psychological perspective with coping strategies, how they cope with the threats and hate. The theories from Hanitzsch presents various perspectives about the journalistic cultures and supports analysis connected to the journalistic role. The method used to gather the material was qualitative interviews with six opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten. For the analysis meaning condensation was used. The result presents a total of ten themes, sorted in three chapters based on the issues. The result and analysis indicates that threats and hate is common for opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten to be exposed by. At the same time, a majority of the participating opinion-forming journalists state that they feel spared. Furthermore, it is very common for the opinion-forming journalist who receives threats or hate to be affected emotionally, mainly with negative emotions such as fear, sadness and discomfort. The biggest professional effect that threats and hate can lead to is self-censorship. Finally, this study can show that there are differences in threats and hate between female and male opinion-forming journalists in Västerbotten. The biggest difference is that women receive more threats and hatred based on sexism and containing sexual allusions.

There are a lot of hidden statistics regarding the extent of hate crimes in Sweden. Statisticsshow that approximately only 2-4 percent of hate crimes committed because of the victim’ssexual orientation are reported to the police when comparing numbers of actual police reports and the statistics from the national safety survey (Nationella trygghetsundersökningen). In England/Wales the rate of police reports regarding hate crimes motivated by the victims sexual orientation is higher, approximately 31,5 percent of all hate crimes in this category are reported to the police. The governments in both Sweden and England/Wales have in the last years committed to strategies aimed at battling the problems regarding hate crimes, including measures for increased reporting. Through policy analysis and process-tracing, this study has been performed with the purpose of investigating which measures have been taken in the both strategies to see which measures are to be preferred when battling hate crime and increasing the victims’ propensity of reporting hate crimes. The results show that in Sweden the approach have been centrally controlled with goals set by the decision makers high up in the hierarchy, while in England/Wales the methods and measures to a significantly greater extent has been created and customized in discussions with the vulnerable groups. There is also a greater focus on making different ways of reporting hate crimes available to the public in England/Wales in comparison with Sweden whereas the only option available is to report a hate crime directly to the police.

Hate crime is a collective name for criminal acts committed due to the offender’s prejudice or hate against an individual or a group of people. There is no explicit legal definition of “hate crime” in Swedish criminal law, but in 1994 a rule called “straffskärpningregeln” has been introduced, primarily to combat racist crime and protect vulnerable groups in society. The rule means that all types of crime may constitute hate crimes if the motive is to aggrieve a person or group of people because of race, colour, ethnic origin, creed, sexual orientation or similar circumstance (Penal Code 29 chapter 2§ 7p).The aim of this essay is to study and investigate how the Swedish judicial system handles hate crime cases, but also to describe constructions of crime victims and discuss perpetrator’s motives. In order to gain a better understanding of hate crimes in the Swedish context, the ideal victim theory has been applied. With the use of critical discourse analysis, I have identified three different discourses. The results of my study are among other findings that the Swedish legal system need to make visible how “straffskärpningregeln” is applied. The perpetrator paints a stereotypical picture of “the others” by categorizing themselves as “we” and the others as “them” and thereby constructing differentiated categories.

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur Polisen i Malmös arbete mot näthat bland unga, i synnerhet sådant näthat som tenderar att eskalera till fysisk misshandel, bedrivs och upplevs idag. Vidare avser studien att utforska om, och i så fall hur, detta arbete kan effektiviseras, såväl utifrån enskilda polisers som ungdomars perspektiv. För att fylla studiens syfte tillämpas en kvalitativ ansats, vilken utgörs av semistrukturerade intervjuer och en fokusgrupp. All insamlad data analyseras genom tematisk analys, där underlaget från poliserna bland annat mynnat ut i teman som: Internet som startpunkt för fysiska konflikter, missnöjdhet över dagens preventiva arbete mot näthat och förbättringsåtgärder online. Datamaterialet från ungdomarna återspeglas i sin tur genom teman som: Anonymitet som accelerator för näthat, önskan om ökad polisiär närvaro online samt förhållningssätt på sociala medier. Slutligen integreras samtliga datamaterial i en resultatdiskussion, varpå några av studiens viktigaste slutsatser är: 1) Polisen i Malmös arbete mot näthat bland unga, i synnerhet sådant näthat som tenderar att leda till fysisk misshandel, upplevs idag vara mycket bristfälligt, 2) Polisen bör i större utsträckning följa internets utveckling samt de trender och brottstriggande beteenden som cirkulerar på sociala medier bland unga, samt 3) Polisens arbete kan förslagsvis förbättras genom att öka närvaron på de plattformar där ungdomar främst uppehåller sig, såväl som att öka närvaron på och samverkan med skolor, fritidsgårdar och andra sociala aktörer.

The theory of shattered assumptions proposes that experiencing traumatic events can change how people view themselves and the world. Most adults experience a traumatic event during their lifetime, and some subsequently develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the current conceptualization of trauma (i.e., Criterion A PTSD) may be too narrow to adequately capture the range of potentially traumatizing events that People of Color experience, including racial discrimination and neighborhood disadvantage. This study investigated the association of racial discrimination and neighborhood disadvantage with core beliefs about the world being safe and predictable (i.e., world assumptions) among a sample of Black, Latine, and Asian young adults. Multi-step analyses of covariance tested associations between racial discrimination and neighborhood disadvantage with world assumptions and whether these held in the context of other traumatic exposures. Results indicated that racial discrimination negatively impacted world assumptions among Asian young adults only and this effect remained in the context of trauma. In addition, low neighborhood support negatively impacted world assumptions across all racial groups and neighborhood violence negatively impacted world assumptions among Latine young adults only; however, this effect did not remain in the context of trauma. This study indicates it is worthwhile to consider other adverse events in the conceptualization of trauma, such as racial discrimination and neighborhood disadvantage, that may impact world assumptions and contribute to subsequent post-trauma psychopathology.

Research on hate crime has tended to utilize sociological frameworks to best explain the incidence of such offending, but little research has been conducted to determine whether political factors may play a role. Although Olzak (1990) touched upon the relationship between racial violence and third-party politics during the American Progressive era (1882-1914), the research did not fully articulate how political competition may influence the commission of hate crime. The current study seeks to fill this gap, while also extending concepts associated with social disorganization theory and the defended communities perspective. It does so by utilizing a longitudinal research design to assess the impact of theoretical predictors and political competition measures on hate crime prevalence in counties across three states (Tennessee, Virginia & West Virginia) over a seven-year span (2010-2016).

This study explores the western Romantic period as a transition between the medieval “open body” and the modern “closed body.” It focuses on “closing body” phenomena such as “mesmerism” (i.e. animal magnetism), somnambulism, substance abuse, and the “second-self,” including notions of the subconscious and the trope of gothic Doppelgängers. This study draws from many pieces of western Romantic literature but is most centered around James Hogg’s 1824 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. This new reading of Hogg’s novel suggests a core theme of body anxiety, rather than theological dispute.

Hateful language is a growing problem in digital spaces. Human moderators are not enough to eliminate the problem. Automated hateful language detection systems are used to aid the human moderators. One of the issues with the systems is that their performance can differ depending on who is the target of a hateful text. This project evaluated the performance of the two systems (Perspective and Hatescan) with respect to who is the target of hateful texts. The analysis showed, that the systems performed the worst for texts directed at women and immigrants. The analysis involved tools such as a synthetic dataset based on the HateCheck test suite, as well as wild datasets created from forum data. Improvements to the test suite HateCheck have also been proposed. / Hatiskt språk är ett växande problem i digitala miljöer. Datamängderna är för stora för att enbart hanteras av mänskliga moderatorer. Automatiska system för hatdetektion används därför som stöd. Ett problem med dessa system är att deras prestanda kan variera beroende på vem som är målet för en hatfull text. Det här projektet evaluerade prestandan av de två systemen Perspective och Hatescan med hänsyn till olika mål för hatet. Analysen visade att systemen presterade sämst för texter där hatet riktades mot kvinnor och invandrare. Analysen involverade verktyg som ett syntetiskt dataset baserat på testsviten HateCheck och vilda dataset med texter inhämtade från diskussionsforum på internet. Dessutom har projektet utvecklat förslag på förbättringar till testsviten HateCheck.