Three Perspectives to Extreme Speech: Theory and Practice

Matti Pohjonen

This talk introduces the concept of extreme speech, initially developed as an anthropological qualifier to explore public controversies around online hateful speech, misinformation and violent online political extremism. Extreme speech, instead of providing a blanket categorisation of all forms of negative speech seen as hateful, proposes that “the production, circulation, and consumption of online vitriol should be approached as much as a cultural practice and social phenomenon as it is a legal or regulatory one” (Udupa and Pohjonen 2019, p 3050). Building on lessons learned from comparative research in Ethiopia, Finland the EU, the talk extends the concept of extreme speech to explore three different perspectives to contemporary research on online digital politics.

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