This paper addresses the specificities of online hate speech against the Afro-descendant, Roma, and LGBTQ+
communities in Portugal. The research is based on the analysis of CO-HATE, a corpus composed of 20,590 YouTube comments, which
were manually annotated following detailed guidelines created for that purpose. We applied methods from corpus
linguistics to assess the prevalence of overt and covert hate speech, counter-speech, and offensive speech, considering different
grounds of discrimination, and to investigate the main linguistic and rhetorical strategies underlying hatred messages. The
research results highlight the importance of tackling covert hate speech, a recurring phenomenon often anchored in irony and
fallacious argumentation, including the emotional appeal to fear and the implicit call to action. We believe this study will aid
in advancing the analysis of online hate speech, while promoting the development of efficient automated detection models,
specifically regarding the Portuguese language.
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