OBJECTIVES

- To critically monitor, characterise and analyse online racial hate speech written during the pandemic and to compare it to the period prior to the pandemic;

- To problematise the rise and normalisation of racist and xenophobic hate speech alongside the growth of the far-right in Portuguese and international politics;

- To promote the theoretical debate in Portugal about racial hate speech, establishing a critical dialogue with its ideological underpinnings;

- To analyse the relationship between racial hate speech and the notion of belonging to the ‘nation’;

- To deconstruct the thesis of ‘reverse racism’;

- To define strategies, counter-narratives and guidelines, which aim to fight the proliferation of hate speech;

- To encourage the involvement of ‘civil society’ in preventing and combating hate speech.