Social Processes of Online Hate

“Introduction to Social Processes of Online Hate” by Joseph B. WaltherJoseph B. Walther holds the Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a distinguished professor of communication and former director of the Center for Information Technology and Society. A Fulbright Scholar, Fellow of the International Communication Association, he has developed several influential theories and behavioral science studies focusing on the effects of mediated interaction in personal relationships, groups, interethnic conflict, and the reduction of prejudice. and Ronald E. RiceRonald E. Rice is Arthur N. Rupe Chair in Social Effects of Mass Communication and Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Montreal. Prof. Rice is a former president and a Fellow of the International Communication Association. He has conducted research and published widely in communication science, public communication campaigns, computer-mediated communication systems, research methodology, organizational and management theory, information systems, information science and bibliometrics, and social networks. orients readers to the notion that hate messaging in social media is a cross-product of communicative interactions among hate posters and the affordances of social media. What appears individual is actually social, and what appears unorganized is actually highly coordinated. It re-orients the study of online hate in ways that the entire volume illuminates.

“Making a Case for Social Processes Approach to Online Hate” by Joseph B. WaltherJoseph B. Walther holds the Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a distinguished professor of communication and former director of the Center for Information Technology and Society. A Fulbright Scholar, Fellow of the International Communication Association, he has developed several influential theories and behavioral science studies focusing on the effects of mediated interaction in personal relationships, groups, interethnic conflict, and the reduction of prejudice. argues that the primary audience of online hate messaging is other online haters, more so than the ostensible victims who hate messages name. Examples and empirical studies about its language, placement, and other characteristics of online hate messages make the case that its primary purpose is nurturing connection among haters.

“Foundations, Definitions, and Directions in Online Hate Research” by Stephanie TongStephanie Tom Tong is a professor in the Communication Department at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA. She is Director of the Social Media and Relational Technologies Labs, which investigates how technology affects the ways people communicate across a variety of contexts, including romance, families, friendships, personal health, and online hate. provides a comprehensive overview of findings related to the prevalence of online hate, its various content and message characteristics, and the effects of online hate on those who experience it. It offers a new taxonomy of hate messaging depending on the targets and the publicness of social media hate.

“Misogyny and Woman Abuse in the Incelosphere: The Role of Online Incel Male Peer Support” by Walter S. DeKeseredyWalter S. DeKeseredy is Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University, West Virginia, USA. He is also an adjunct professor in Monash University’s Gender and Family Violence Prevention Center. DeKeseredy has published 28 books, over 130 scientific journal articles, and close to 120 scholarly book chapters on violence against women and other social problems. describes how incels, or involuntarily celibate males, use online community to share their invectives against “Stacys” (women who resist their sexual advances) and “Chads” (men who are sexually active). The chapter applies male peer support theory to explain how, online, incels console each other and rationalize one another’s hatred toward others.

“From Echo Chambers to Digital Campfires: The Making of an Online Community of Hate in Stormfront”by Anton TörnbergAnton Törnberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. His research chiefly focuses on the radical right movement online, particularly radicalization processes and violent extremism, by combining computational methods with qualitative approaches. He is currently involved in a research project that addresses the far right online and the interplay between online discourses and offline action. and Petter TörnbergPetter Törnberg is an assistant professor of computational social science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Dr. Petter Törnberg also holds appointments at the University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and is Associate Professor of Complex Systems at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. His research concerns how digital technology is reshaping our politics, media, and cities. He uses computational methods and digital data to examine the consequences of datafication, platformization, and AI from a critical perspective. examines how participation in one of the longest-standing interaction sites explicitly for white nationalists, Stormfront, nurtures community through story-telling. They demonstrate how new participants’ language converges over time toward veteran users’, as expressions and worldviews about other races and religions become uniformly extreme.

In “‘Deal’ of the Day: Sex, Porn and Political Hate on Social Media” Sahana UdupaSahana Udupa is a professor of media anthropology at the University of Munich (LMU), Germany, where she directs the research program “For Digital Dignity.” A Fellow of the International Communication Association, and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, she formerly held the Joan Shorenstein Fellowship at Harvard, the Francqui Chair in Belgium, and has been awarded European Research Council grants. and Oeendrila L. GeroldOeendrila L. Gerold is a postdoctoral researcher in the online misogyny project funded by the Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation (BIDT) at the University of Munich (LMU), Munich, Germany. Her research focuses on feminist resistance and religious nationalism in the digital space. Her training is interdisciplinary, with a focus on colonial and postcolonial studies. describe bogus public online auctions of Muslim women in India unbeknownst to the women whose pictures were stolen. The essay and data explore the overlapping social forces of religious majoritarianism, pornification of online culture, and other factors feeding hate toward Muslims and women veiled as techno-entertainment and “fun”.

Adam BurstonAdam Burston is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, with an emphasis in information, technology, and society. His work lies at the intersection of social movements, technology, and identity. His dissertation, “Radicalization vs. Resistance and Recommitment: Why Conservative Youth Accept or Reject Extremism,” focuses on the strategies that student activists employ to radicalize their moderate peers. ’s “Digitally Mediated Spillover as a Catalyst of Radicalization: How Digital Hate Movements Shape Conservative Youth Activism” is an in-depth look at how college club members become radicalized through the influence of new members who previously participated in alt-right social media. The evolution and eventual dissolution of a college chapter parallels its adoption of and participation in online hate. 

In “’Hate Parties’: Networked Antisemitism from the Fringes to YouTube,” Stephen ReaStephen C. Rea is a Senior Researcher at the Critical Internet Studies Institute. A cultural anthropologist with expertise is in digital culture, trust, and community, his projects have included ethnographic research on South Korean online gaming culture, fairness and ethics in crowd work labor markets, and online hate, harassment, and digital extremism on social media. , Binny MathewBinny Mathew is Machine Learning Scientist at the Center for Technology and Society, ADL, New York, USA. Dr. Mathew is a natural language processing researcher, with an interest in online hate speech and counter measures. His work has been published in several top-tier computer science and data science conferences. He has also contributed multiple high-quality datasets and models to the research community. , and Jordan KraemerJordan Kraemer is Director of Research at the Center for Technology and Society, Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Dr. Kraemer is Media Anthropologist, with expertise studying digital platforms, social inequality, gender, and urban life. She currently directs research on hate and harassment online at ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. investigate cross-platform hate, when users post messages on a fringe platform linking to and encouraging comments on a different, mainstream platform. The practice creates conversations that span multiple spaces simultaneously. The conversations evade content restrictions on some spaces but not others, echoing across platforms.

“Information Sharing and Content Framing across Multiple Platforms and Functional Roles That Exemplify Social Processes of Online Hate Groups” by Shruti PhadkeShruti Phadke is a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA, with a Ph.D. in information science from the University of Washington. Her research focuses on computationally understanding participation, social knowledge construction, and resource mobilization in online communities of problematic information. Her research benefits from multiple methodological approaches ranging from statistics, causal machine learning, natural language processing, and qualitative methods. and Tanushree MitraTanushree Mitra is an assistant professor in the Information School at University of Washington. Her research interests are in social computing, where she combines ideas from both computer science and social science to uncover insights about social life online. Dr. Mitra is also an adjunct affiliate of UW CSE, an affiliate faculty of the Center for an Informed Public, and a cofounding director of RAISE, a Center for Responsibility in AI Systems and Experiences. examines how traditional, offline hate groups use Facebook and Twitter/X to create an online ecosphere of hate, misinformation, and conspiracies, to grow their movements, cultivate new recruits, and spread their dogma.

“Detecting Anti-Social Norms in Large-Scale Online Discussions” by Yotam ShmargadYotam Shmargad is an associate professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on understanding how digital platforms shape social and political life in the United States. He uses a mix of statistical and computational techniques, including social network analysis, online data collection, virtual experimentation, machine learning, and econometric methods. His research speaks to questions about how social media dampen certain disparities while magnifying others and how social media can both fuel political polarization and incivility and extinguish their flames. , Stephen A. Rains Stephen A. Rains is Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona. His research is situated in the areas of health communication, social influence, and communication and technology. He is interested in better understanding how and why messages influence people, particularly in health contexts and when using communication technologies. He is especially interested in leveraging computational techniques to explore the dynamic communication processes involved in these phenomena., Kevin CoeKevin Coe is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, Utah, USA. Professor Coe’s research employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to better understand political communication, news media, and public opinion. Professor Coe teaches courses on media, strategic communication, political communication, and content analysis. , Kate KenskiKate Kenski is a professor in the Department of Communication and School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, where she teaches political communication, public opinion, and research methods. Her current research focuses on social media and incivility, gender and politics, and presidential campaigns. , and Steven BethardSteven Bethard is Associate Professor at the School of Information at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, with courtesy appointments in linguistics, cognitive science, computer science, and applied mathematics. Dr. Bethard’s research interests include natural language processing and machine learning theory and applications, including modeling the language of time and timelines, normalizing text to medical and geospatial ontologies, and information extraction models for clinical applications. looks at anti-social commenting on news sites generally and on social network platforms during the January 6, 2020 attack on the US Capitol. They describe how norms for toxic postings emerge through the patterns of encouragements, or “upvotes” that others’ toxic comments receive, and the effects of upvotes on one’s own continued toxic postings.

“Understanding the Phases of Coordinated Online Aggression Attacks” by Gianluca StringhiniGianluca Stringhini is an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University, holding affiliate appointments in the Computer Science Department, in the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, in the BU Center for Antiracist Research, and in the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research. In his research, he applies a data-driven approach to better understand malicious activity on the Internet. and Jeremy BlackburnJeremy Blackburn is Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Binghamton University, State University of New York, New York, USA. He is broadly interested in data science, with a focus on large-scale measurements and modeling. His largest line of work is in understanding jerks on the Internet. His research into understanding toxic behavior, hate speech, and fringe and extremist Web communities. use data records to demonstrate collaboration in organized, deliberate hate posting attacks, in five stages of planning and coordination. Organizing on fringe platforms, attacking on mainstream social media, the attackers are in constant contact, updating their strategies, boasting about who they upset, and celebrating their YouTube raids and Zoombombing attacks.

“Background Scholarship and a Synthesis of Themes in Social Processes of Online Hate” by Ronald E. RiceRonald E. Rice is Arthur N. Rupe Chair in Social Effects of Mass Communication and Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Montreal. Prof. Rice is a former president and a Fellow of the International Communication Association. He has conducted research and published widely in communication science, public communication campaigns, computer-mediated communication systems, research methodology, organizational and management theory, information systems, information science and bibliometrics, and social networks. traces trends in research and press coverage on online hate, and identifies propositions about social processes that perpetuate online hate from across the chapters in the volume. It reviews methodological themes, prospective interventions, and challenges to future research in online hate.