Abstract
Hate speech, which occurs in all areas of social life and basically indicates a practice of exclusion, includes all forms of expression that spread, promote, defend, or justify forms of hatred based on intolerance. The prevalence of hate speech is closely related to the radical transformations and changes created by the new media in the forms of social communication. Contrary to traditional media, by creating interactive public spaces, new media has become the most convenient tool by which all kinds of hate speech can be circulated rapidly and intensively. The amount of hate speech often observed on Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms, increases, even more, when it comes to political and ethnic enmities. This study seeks to understand how ethnically-based hate speech is constructed in user comments on social media. In order to achieve this, messages about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict posted on the BBC News Facebook page between September 27, 2020, and November 10, 2020, were identified. The news item "Armenia and Azerbaijan clash over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region" from September 28, 2020, served as an example. As part of the study reveals the similarities and differences between Azerbaijani and Armenian users in the construction of hate speech, user comments were categorized according to their content and subjected to discourse analysis. At the end of the study, which emphasized the importance of legal regulations to prevent hate suggestions were made about the obligations of media institutions in this regard.