- Browse/Search the Program
Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Browse By Room
- Information Menu
Search Tips
Virtual Exhibit Hall
- Navigation and Settings Menu
Personal Schedule
Sign In
Hate crime investigations and social media evidence
Fri, September 13, 3:30 to 4:45pm, Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Floor: Basement, Room 0.14Abstract
Social media has been in constant flux since its inception. These changes have also occurred over the past few years, offering new and expanded opportunities and attracting a growing number of users. Becoming a part of people's everyday life, social media have not only brought something new to it, but have also taken over negative phenomena that previously occurred only in the offline world.
Hate crimes and hate speech more broadly have quickly become a typical part of social media reality. This has also contributed to a growing interest in the subject among researchers representing various scientific disciplines.
Hate acts on social media, especially the most serious ones that constitute crimes, have also become a subject of interest from the perspective of legal sciences. This is because, on many occasions, these cases have found their way to the courts, which have had to face a completely new type of evidence - evidence from social media.
This paper will present the results of court file research covering Polish criminal cases completed in recent years. Exploratory research, covering cases completed in 2017-2019, will be compared with research conducted in recent months, which shows a picture of recent cases. Quantitative analysis of court records will be dedicated to the characteristics of social media evidence in hate crime cases.
Of particular interest will be the characteristics of the parties to the proceedings, how social media evidence was introduced and used in criminal proceedings, as well as the reaction to the introduction of this type of evidence and its importance for the course of the proceedings. An attempt will be made to describe the role that social media evidence plays in criminal proceedings involving hate crimes, in particular by identifying possible differences in the assessment of the issue of this event occurrence and its circumstances.