Orange County (Calif.) Register:
Study: Hate speech on ‘John and Ken,’ Dobbs talk radio?
Two UCLA professors have put out a report seeking to quantify hate speech on immigration-themed talk radio.
They found a lot of it. But what they called hate speech, others would call plain, if possibly impolite, English; terms like “illegals,” “illegal aliens,” and even “illegal immigrants.”
That’s the way to find all that “hate” out there. Define it so loosely that everybody “hates.”
The study, titled “Quantifying Hate Speech on Commercial Radio,” is a preliminary attempt by professors Chon A. Noriega and Francisco Javier Iribarren to “develop a sound, replicable methodology for qualitative content analysis” of hate speech on the air.
The cursory study, which was not peer-reviewed, was intended to quantify hate speech and to fact-check claims made by the hosts and their guests.
The professors didn’t stick to official definitions of hate speech (i.e., directly or indirectly fostering violence against minorities). Any use of terms such as “illegals” or “illegal immigrants” was enough to get a check mark in their hate speech tally.
Look on the bright side — If you didn’t give them affirmative action sinecures in the name of “higher education,” Califaztlan taxpayer, Drs. Noriega and Iribarren might have to shovel animal manure to earn a living. You saved them.
All in all, this effort fits four of ESR’s eight possible red flags for Junk Science.
