Critical literacy and hate speech: a research in Secondary Education

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the critical capacity of students when placed in front of a relevant social problem such as the hate speech, given that a great part of the information transmitted by the media or social networks is marked by the presence of hate speech. The research has been carried out among students in their third and fourth years of Secondary Education in three educational centers in the area of Barcelona. The results of the study have been obtained from different research activities: class activities with open and closed questions, for instance, the analysis of stories that appeared on social networks; discussion groups; interviews with Social Sciences teachers; and the analysis of the Catalan and Spanish Secondary Education curriculum. This article shows the results obtained from two questions from the dossier, answered by 159 students. The aim of this study is to verify the ability of students to analyze hate speech and build counter-narratives (of hate based) on the stories that appear on social networks and the media. The results obtained thus far, confirm that students do not seem to be capable of critical literacy in order to build counter-narratives of hate.