Exploring Discrimination Online: A Critical Discourse Analysis of New Forms of Hate Speech Against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities

In August 2023, a leaflet titled “Gypsy and Traveller site coming to your area soon!” was distributed in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire regarding the development of a Gypsy and Traveller site. The leaflet asked people to fill out a form to determine their opinion on the proposal to establish sites in the area. Firstly, this article will focus on newspaper comment sections to look for instances of hate speech against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities, but also to analyse readers’ responses to the articles about this issue and to explore how meanings are produced when readers react to the news reports, drawing on van Dijk’s theory of Sociocognitive Discourse Studies (2016). A sample of comments posted by readers on the websites of some British tabloid newspapers has been collected in order to analyse the connection between discursive and social structures. Secondly, the article will determine how the main social actors are represented in the comments, adopting the analytical tools drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis and van Leeuwen’s (1996) inventory of socio-semantic categories and modes of representation.