Hate Speech in Poland. Content Analysis and Case Study

The aim of our study was to analyse utterances about important groups and social phenomena in Poland in terms of the themes identified by Winiewski et al. (2017) as characteristic of hate speech. The face-to-face study involved 200 people (98 women and 102 men) who described seven selected photographs. Their utterances (N = 1400) were analysed using the method of competent judges. Although the content of hateful speech found in the study was low (56 cases), of the seven social groups that were described by the subjects, two appear to arouse more negative emotions and encourage a greater loss of restraint: people with obesity and Catholic clergy. In future research, it would be useful to pay particular attention to these two social groups in the context of their negative evaluation and its psychological determinants.