AN EXPLORATION OF COGNITIVE CAPITAL IN THE FACE OF HATE SPEECH DUE TO RACISM

It is accepted that the discourses of any Communication practice are preceded by memories and emotions, values, and prejudices as cognitive capital that conditions expression and subsequent interpretation when they are shared in a specific social context. This mediation between Knowledge, Communication and Society is explored here, probing the cognitive capital of two similar groups of individuals in the context of a class exercise, responding to a Likert-type attitude test applied before and after viewing a documentary on racism. The results compared between the two groups reveal profiles of that cognitive capital in the interpretation of a hate speech exhibited in the documentary, and that illustrate perspectives when assessing bodily ethnic differences, expectations, and social opportunities that ethnic groups therefore find and, finally, rights to protection from violence. Thus, a way to study the dialectic between cognitive capital on racism, hate speech, and natural contexts of social practices is explored.