The amount of hate speech toward ethnic minorities would be reduced by good language hygiene in the media and public discourse, say experts from the media analysis company “Mediaskopas,” who have examined 850 media channels from the beginning of 2019 to the present. “In the media, especially in crime reports, emphasizing a nationality other than Lithuanian (even though they are all citizens of Lithuania) reinforces a negative context and provides a pretext for hate to arise toward ethnic minorities. That is why language hygiene is especially important in public discourse: if overt emphasis on nationality is removed, hate speech toward ethnic minorities will also significantly decrease,” says Aidas Petrošius, an expert at the media research company “Mediaskopas.”
