Xenophobic and homophobic attitudes: National report for Malta

The University of Malta is proud to launch the National Report that was produced for the Contact project (Creating an On-line Network, monitoring Team and phone App to Counter hate crime Tactics).

The project, which received funding from the Rights, Equality & Citizenship programme of the European Commission Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers aimed at combating hate crime through research and training activities in 10 countries namely Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK).

The study, carried out within the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology, confirmed findings that in Malta hate speech and hate crime are often not seen as a serious offence and is significantly under-reported. In the local context, the issue has become increasingly relevant, as the influx of irregular migrants, the recent legalization of civil unions and the new Gender Identity Bill seem to have affected the problems of hate speech and hate crime targeted at particular minority groups on the Maltese islands.

In fact, the research conducted for the project, in which newspaper comment sections were analysed, showed that xenophobic speech occurs at a much higher frequency and to a much harsher degree than homophobic speech. Xenophobic sentiments appear to arouse racist, Islamaphobic and anti-migrant discourse, which tightly correspond to attitudes of nationalism, patriotism and fear and which provoke strong emotional responses. The National Report for Malta is available on http://staff.um.edu.mt/__data/ assets/pdf_file/0007/328903/C ONTACTNationalreportforMaltaUM-Malta.pdf)