The principal aims of “Documenting hate speech in Lithuania” project were:

•To provide a resource for practitioners by collecting documentation on the hate speech issues against LGBT people in Lithuania (in media);

•To provide an information material for the LGBT community which would allow to raise awareness on the issue;

•To promote greater understanding and awareness of the effects of hate towards society in general;

•To identify strategies and measures to establish a greater protection of the LGBT people, against whom the hate speech is targeted, in general and separate cases.

This brief study focused on discursive patterns employed by the Lithuanian press and TV to present LGBT people during the period of February 13, 2006, to May 29, 2007. This study described how the topic of homosexuality and LGBT people has been presented and on what modes of representation the Lithuanian press and TV have been drawing when they have represented gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. Not only it quantified the presence or absence of LGBT people and assess how they are described in the press and on TV, but it also presented a closer rhetorical and discursive analysis of images associated with them. Do any instances of Lithuanian media rhetoric qualify as hate speech? What beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, norms and values underlie the media rhetoric on LGBT people?

Not private enough?: homophobic and injurious speech in the Lithuanian mass media, 2007