Dehumanization Online: Measurement and Consequences (DeHum)

The goal of the proposed research is to understand how social media and mainstream media affect the dehumanization of marginalized social groups (e.g., migrants, roma and sinti, LGBTQ people). The research is organized in two sub-projects which are both required to enhance our understanding of dehumanization in cyberspace. The goal of the first project is methodological. It aims to advance state-of-the-art methods for measuring dehumanization in English and German texts. The goal of the second project is empirical. The second project will use the methods developed and evaluated in the first project to investigate which channels support the distribution of content that dehumanizes marginalized social groups and what features in terms of demographics, socio-political attitudes or other predispositions characterize the consumers and producers of this content.