Less Hate, More Speech
The Less Hate, More Speech project examined the role political elites and mass media play, intentionally or unintentionally, in reducing or promoting anti-democratic and intolerant discourse among the citizens.
Main content
The University of Bergen was a partner of the Less Hate, More Speech project: An experimental and comparative study in media and political elite's ability to nurture civil, tolerant, pro-democratic citizens. Elisabeth Ivarsflaten is leader of the University of Bergen research team, cooperating with Median Research Centre, Romania, and the Central European University, Hungary. The project used the Norwegian Citizen Panel to collect data.
Project overview:
The Less Hate, More Speech project examines the role political elites and mass media play, intentionally or unintentionally, in reducing or promoting anti-democratic and intolerant discourse among the citizens. It engages an international group of social scientists in designing and employing online experiments, cross-national surveys and content analysis of online commentary on media content to understand the factors that shape the tone of everyday talk among Romanians, and create differences and similarities between Romania and Norway in popular responses to various discursive frames and elite signals.
The project also has an applied component to establish the extent to which the tone of everyday talk can be changed to promote a tolerant, inclusive and pro-democratic public discourse in a contemporary Romanian real-life setting frequented by hundreds of thousand citizens.