Approaches to Defining the “Hate Element” of a Behavior: A Data-Driven Typology

This article addresses the proliferation of definitions and approaches used to characterize the hate element in behaviors motivated by hate, including hate crimes, hate speech, and behaviors motivated by prejudice against specific identities (e.g., homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia), and investigates whether these definitions cluster into distinct types. Using machine learning, we clustered 423 definitions from academic and gray literature in five languages between 1990 and 2021, based on 16 theoretically derived categories. The resulting typology captures the diversity of definitions from ten countries in North America, Europe, and Oceania, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding how the hate element is conceptualized in these contexts. The findings offer a basis for future research and may help inform policy responses to hate-motivated behaviors.