Fighting Hate and Hate Speech: Raising Anti-Hate Awareness through Critical Analysis of Popular Cultural Texts on an Undergraduate Course

Central to the understanding of hate is an apprehension of the complexities of various hate-motivated social attitudes, which include Othering and the production of social, economic, and political hierarchies of domination. While hate speech is endemic both online and offline in contemporary society, Korean youths have difficulties recognizing its structural forces. The present study aims to offer an instructional model of a college-level course for identifying and countering hate in everyday life. As participants in this course, students read popular cultural texts thematizing hate, wrote critical reviews, and held group discussions to develop anti-hate critical thinking and raise awareness about online hate speech and hate-motivated social behavior. They showed significant progress in the surveys, which measured anti-hate critical thinking, as well as during the course, as they proceeded from observing and identifying hate speech to formulating and articulating proactive strategies to challenge it. This study provided an opportunity for college students to develop good citizenship in reading hate speech and representations of hate in popular cultural texts with a critical eye, and to reflect on the problem of hate in society.