Counterspeech

Abstract

Counterspeech is communication that tries to counteract potential harm brought about by other speech. Theoretical interest in counterspeech partly derives from a libertarian ideal -as captured in the claim that the solution to bad speech is more speech -and partly from a recognition that well-meaning attempts to counteract harm through speech can easily misfire or backfire. Here we survey recent work on the question of what makes counterspeech effective at remedying or preventing harm, in those cases where it is effective, as well as work investigating when and why there is a duty to engage in counterspeech. We suggest that the most fruitful area for philosophical inquiry on this topic, currently, relates to the questions about efficacy. Specifically, we argue that there is a need for better frameworks for conceptualizing the efficacy of counterspeech. Philosophers have collaborative work to do, alongside social scientists, in developing these frameworks.

How does pornography change desires? A pragmatic account

“…Even though P4 is already part of the to-do list, some people will accept P1 (= L&W's declarative content) when confronted with pornographic content, but others might not. As has been pointed out in much work on non-at-issue contents that are added to the common ground through the 'back door', it is possible to reject or block the accommodation of these contents (Cepollaro, Lepoutre & Simpson 2023;Langton 2018;Camp 2018;Haslanger 2011;von Fintel 2004;Heck 2021). If this is the case, the pragmatic inference we outlined in this section won't be initiated.…”

Counterspeakers’ Perspectives: Unveiling Barriers and AI Needs in the Fight against Online Hate

“…However, designing an AI system for counterspeech is a unique challenge that requires an understanding of larger context of its impact on those who do it [8]. On one hand, it is important to reduce the burden on counterspeakers [67], who are sometimes victims of hate speech themselves [20]. On the other hand, naive AI solutions that simply generate counterspeech without human oversight could significantly detract from the authentic, empowering, and emotionally connecting experience that counterspeech provides to users [12,42], despite being a growing area of research in AI [24,108,149].…”

Provocative Insinuations as Hate Speech: Argumentative Functions of Mentioning Ethnicity in Headlines

“…These inferences are insinuations because the speaker is not directly and explicitly aiming to convey a negative message. And they are provocative, because they place the hearer in a difficult position, since they (i) provoke the hearer's outraged response but (ii) almost no form of reply seems to counter its negative effects (see Cepollaro et al 2023). Here, in Sect.…”

“…We proposed to categorise (1) as a specific type of insinuation, namely provocative insinuations (PIs). The motivation for this label was the idea that (i) these utterances provoke the hearer to react against the utterance's racist undertones, but (ii) for almost any form of counterspeech that a hearer wants to use against the insinuation, it seems that the insinuator can deflect any accusations of misbehaviour (see Cepollaro et al 2023).…”