The likelihood of the speech act generating a situation which represents a clear and immediate danger to the social group targeted by the expression is probably the hardest and most important test that an evaluator must perform in order to positively qualify an expression of hate speech as being sufficiently extreme to require a criminal investigation of censorship from state institutions.

The aim here is to establish a clear cause – effect relationship between the expression and the potential of the audience to act against the targets of the expression.

 Criteria to be considered

Effects produced by the hate message

The answer options we are proposing are the following: “No effects produced”, “Audience engaged in verbal violent conduct”, “Audience engaged in violent / discriminatory actions”. In order for an expression to be evaluated as having engaged the audience in verbal violent conduct, a significant number of its audience must engage in hate speech using themes, expressions or ideas from the original expression.

However, for an expression to be evaluated as having engaged the audiences in violent / discriminatory actions, it is sufficient that just one member of the audience has engaged in such actions, but a clear connection between the expression and the actions must be established (such as the audience member confessing about having the expression as an inspiration source for his actions).

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Does the audience have the means to act on the incitement?

To determine this, the evaluator must have a good understanding of the audience exposed to the expression. Inciting people to act against a group with whom they are extremely less likely to have contact due, for example, to the geographical distances between the groups is far less serious than inciting a group who has power over another group to act against it (for example, inciting teachers to discriminate against children belonging to a certain social group).

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Probability of the audience acting on the hate message

While the evaluation based on the previous criterion relies on knowing the socio-demographic characteristics and the dynamic of relations between the audience of an expression and its targets, the evaluation based on this criterion is even harder because the inner resorts and motivations of the intended audience must be intuited. The way the audience has reacted in the past to similar messages could be of use here. The answer options we are proposing are “Low likelihood of action taking place”, “Medium likelihood of action taking place”, “High likelihood of action taking place”.

2021-03-16T05:38:00