Since the advent of Twitter in 2006, South Africa has witnessed a spectacular explosion of racist discourse on social media platforms. According to the South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC, 2016), the centres of explosive racist discourses are Twitter and Facebook. SAHRC (2016) further notes that recent racist outbursts on Twitter and Facebook threaten the creation of a non-racial society and general social cohesion in South Africa. The surge of racist rants in South Africa reflects a society that is increasingly becoming racially polarised (South African Institute of Race Relations, 2018). The SAHRC trend analysis report (2016) reveals that discrimination on the grounds of race remains the highest of equality complaints, with an annual increase in high-profile derogatory incidences frequently aimed at black Africans. Similarly, Daniels (2009), Rauch and Schantz (2013) and Shepherd et al.(2015) note that social media have become a major conveyer of hate crimes against racial minorities and a major reason for the failure of multiculturalism as an institutional practice at a global level. Social media discussions on the subject of race in South Africa have served to highlight how racism remains pervasive and toxic (SAHRC, 2016). Some studies, such as those by Mafoko (2017) and Stephens (2018), have argued that the ‘rainbow nation’that the first democratically elected president of the country, Nelson Mandela, envisaged is now history–not a lived reality.
Hate speech and polarization in participatory society, 67-82
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