YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

66 Since 2014, young people are increasingly of the opinion that immigration negatively affects life in Slovenia. However, young people today agree much more than 10 years ago that employers should prioritize native-born Slovenes when searching for new workers. 1.6  YOUTH BELIEFS ABOUT HATE SPEECH Hate speech is a varied, evenmercurial concept with narrower and broad- er definitions. The Slovenian criminal code does not mention free speech, but Article 297 does stipulate punishment of up to two years in prison for offenders who “publicly incite hatred, violence, and intolerance” on the basis of “national, racial, religious or ethnic affiliation, gender” etc. (KZ- 1). The Slovenian online platform Spletno oko (2020), designed to report internet hate speech, defines the concept as “the expression of opinions and ideas which are discriminatory in nature and typically target vulner- able groups (ethnic, national, religious, cultural, gender, etc.).” A whopping 70% of youth think there is too much hate speech in our society. Only 12.3% are of the opinion that hate speech is not excessive, while 20% are undecided. None of the usual demographic predictors (gender, age, education, etc.) are tied to the perception of hate speech in a statistically significant way. This means that the perception of hate speech is demographically normally distributed across the population of young people. A whopping 70% of young people think that there is too much hate speech in Slovenia. More than 80% report encountering hate speech at least once a month. Left-leaning (especially far-left) young people perceive more hate speech than centre- or right-leaning (especially far-right) ones.