An action of the project titled Media Watch on Hate Speech, the international conference named "Wounding Words and Acts: Hate Crimes and Hate Speech" was held in Istanbul Bilgi University between 9-11 April 2010.
The conference started on Friday at 16.00 with the presentation of the findings of the media monitoring of 8 months, along with the analysisi of some selected news and articles from the monitored newspapers. Same day Prof. Teun A. van Dijk, a prominent academician on critical discourse analysis studies, gave a lecture titled “discourse and power”, at which he emphasized the importance of an in-depth social analysis to be able to do discourse analysis.
Saturday sessions of the conference discussed the effects, results of and the preventative measures for hate speech, laying out some striking examples of hate crimes such as the role of the media in the assasination of Hrant Dink and the Malatya massacre. The first session of Sunday was on legal mechanisms that can be used in the struggle against hate crimes and extreme speech, both national and regional. Last two sessions of the conference were on activism and NGO representatives from Turkey, Poland and Ukraine shared their experiences and activities.
The two workshops ended with two major recommendations: the need for an institutional media watch mechanism and the international cooperation to end hate speech.
The book titled Hate Crimes and Hate Speech comprised of presentations delivered at the conference was published and launched online in September of the same year.
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 Hate Crimes and Hate Speech |
