Online CAT project presentation: "Drawing Lines: Humor, Free Speech and Hate Speech"
Freedom of humor and satire is an essential component of democratic life; but at the same time, some forms of humor can be a vehicle for hateful or anti-democratic messages. How can we draw a line between free speech and hate speech, when it comes to humor? Answering these questions is particularly difficult in the case of highly condensed (and often ambiguous) forms of visual humor, such as cartoons or memes.
On 21 September, the members of the Constructive Advanced Thinking team ‘Cartoons in Court’, presented the project which they will be working on during the next three years in four European Institutes for Advanced Study. The project focuses on visual humor controversies from an interdisciplinary perspective, with special but not exclusive regard to cartoons. The event started with a presentation by the team members, followed by an open Q&A.