“Not all motherfuckers are MENA, but most MENA are motherfuckers” Hate speech on Twitter against unaccompanied foreign minors

Abstract

The number of unaccompanied foreign minors (Menor Extranjero No Acompañado, MENA) in Spain has risen, which has led to them being the subject of discriminatory language and negative stereotyping on Twitter. This study analyses the characteristics of hate speech against MENA on the social platform Twitter and seeks to identify its triggers. A quantitative analysis using text mining and text analytics was performed on 10,776 tweets mentioning MENA published from January 2018 to March 2021. The study concluded that hate speech was built around the terms criminal, rape and steal, and was characterized by use of language that stripped these minors of the features usually attributed to children, a process which can be described as adultification. Similarly, the analysis revealed that the main trigger of hate speech was the way in which the media reported violent crimes attributed to MENA, displaying what was perceived as positive bias towards their integration.