Facebook: A Platform for Hate Speech against Muslims

Incitement, violence and hatred contents have become commonplace on Social Networking Sites especially on Facebook to particular group of people especially Muslims. Therefore, this study aims to explore how Facebook is used as a platform for hate speech against Muslims and Islam and which terms are used to refer to Muslims by observing and analyzing particular Facebook pages, groups and posts on one hand, and by observing and analyzing the comments of the users towards these pages, groups and posts on the other hand. Qualitative research methodology has been used for the present research and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been used to analyze my data by using micro and macro levels according to Van Dijk. This study examined 88 of different posts, pages and comments and found about 373 cases of hate speech directed against Muslim on Facebook platform. The data were collected from the 1st of January 2018 until the 30th of March 2018. My procedures went through many stages. Firstly, I started saving posts from the pages I already followed on Facebook, then searching for pages which directly indicate to spread hate speech against Muslim by the “search button”. In addition to that, by the “save” item that Facebook offers for the post, I started saving all the posts I needed and which I have found them linked to my aims and objectives, then, I started to collect my materials by taking screen shots from my mobile for all the pages, posts, and comments that have a relation to hate speech against Muslim. The findings revealed three main common themes of the data, which include “the fear of “Islamization”, relating Muslims with violence or “terrorism”, and the stereotypical image of Muslim women. Overall, this study found Muslims being dispraised online which had discovered through bigotry, negative attitudes, arrogance, discrimination, stereotypes and online harassment which all had the potential to provoke violence or prejudicial action. Keywords: Facebook, Hate Speech, Bigotry, Muslims, Critical Discourse Analysis