Too civil to care? How online hate speech against different social groups affects bystander intervention
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708231156328 |
| Author | Magdalena Obermaier,Ursula Kristin Schmid,Diana Rieger |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Too civil to care? How online
hate speech against different
social groups affects bystander
intervention
Magdalena Obermaier ,
Ursula Kristin Schmid ,
and Diana Rieger
LMU Munich, Germany
Abstract
A large share ofonline users has already witnessedonline hate speech. Because targetstend to inter-
pret such bystanders’lack of reaction as agreement with the hate speech, bystander intervention in
online hate speech iscrucial as it can help alleviate negative consequences. Despite evidence regard-
ing online bystander intervention, however, whetherbystanders evaluate online hate speech target-
ing different social groups as equally uncivil and, thereby, equally worthy of intervention remains
largely unclear. Thus, we conducted an online experiment systematically varying the type of online
hate speech as homophobia, racism, and misogyny. The results demonstrate that, although all three
forms were perceived as uncivil, homophobic hate speech was perceived to be less uncivil than hate
speech against women. Consequently, misogynist hate speech, compared to homophobic hate
speech, increased feelings of personal responsibility and, in turn, boosted willingness to confront.
Keywords
Bystander intervention, homophobia, incivility, misogyny, online hate speech, racism
About 80% of German internet users have already witnessed hate speech online
(Isenberg, 2019; LfM, 2022). Such speech typically derogates others based on their ’eth-
nicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or some other characteristic that defines
a group’(Hawdon et al., 2017: 254). Because individuals tend to interpret a lack of reac-
tion by others to indicate that they agree with the hateful statements, uninvolved
Corresponding author:
Magdalena Obermaier, Department of Media and Communication, LMU Munich, Oettingenstr. 67, 80538
Munich, Germany.
Email: obermaier@ifkw.lmu.de
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(3) 817–833
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14773708231156328
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
bystanders, as the largest group of witnesses of these incidents, play a central role
(Leonhard et al., 2018; Schieb and Preuss, 2016). For the targeted social groups and
minorities, the absence of interventions can have severe consequences. For instance,
there is evidence that hate speech—similar to traumatizing events—can trigger negative
emotions and physiological reactions (for example, fear, stress) and foster negative cog-
nitions, such as depressive thoughts and a loss of self-esteem (Geschke et al., 2019; Leets,
2002). In addition, we know that witnessing hate crimes offline can exacerbate one’s
negative attitudes toward targeted groups (Keel et al., 2022). Thus, bystander intervention
in online hate speech is critical because it is thought to help alleviate negative conse-
quences for targeted groups (Preuß et al., 2017). This holds true especially for counter-
arguing in publicly visible user comments (Bartlett and Krasodomski-Jones, 2015), as
this particular form of intervention may prevent both targets and other bystanders from
perceiving that online hate speech is acceptable in a democratic society (Kümpel and
Rieger, 2019; see also Zerback and Fawzi, 2017). Thereby, it may also help to prevent
hateful online discourses (Hsueh et al., 2015) and polarization tendencies
(Meleagrou-Hitchens and Kaderbhai, 2017) in the long run. In this vein, it is argued
that there is a moral imperative for bystander intervention in online hate speech
because it openly rejects and counteracts verbal attacks using inclusionary messages
about the targeted groups (Iganski, 2020).
Some preliminary evidence suggests that uninvolved bystanders intervene to dispute
online hate speech the more threatening they believe it to be (Leonhard et al., 2018).
However, whether bystanders evaluate online hate speech against different social
groups as equally uncivil or threatening and, thus, equally worthy of intervention
remains largely unclear to date. Our study addresses this question and, thus, extends
the existing literature on several points. To the best of our knowledge, we are among
the first to systematically compare the perceived incivility of hate speech against different
social groups. To do so, we focus on three of the groups most frequently affected by
online hate speech (Geschke et al., 2019; Nennstiel and Isenberg, 2022): individuals
with a migration background (that is, people who themselves and/or at least one of
their parents and/or grandparents were not born in their country of residence), women,
and the LGBTQIA+community. Second, we investigate whether witnessing one of
these types of hate speech can increase the intention to provide messages countering
such speech, and, third, we examine the mechanisms behind this intervention referring
to the decision model of bystander intervention (here referred to as the bystander inter-
vention model or BIM; see Latané and Darley, 1970). For this purpose, we conducted
an online experiment whereby we varied the type of online hate speech as homophobia,
racism, or misogyny in order to study how online hate speech against different social
groups can affect the intention of uninvolved bystanders to counter such speech.
Online hate speech and counterspeech
As the smallest common denominator states that ‘express hatred or degrading attitudes
toward a collective’(Hawdon et al., 2017: 254) are defined as hate speech. Thereby,
hate speech devalues individuals on the basis of personal characteristics by which they
can be assigned to certain social groups such as race, gender, and sexual orientation
818 European Journal of Criminology 20(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial