How social responses to online hate messages affect hatefulness

Bibliographic Data

ID12655729
AuthorsY Yang (0000-0002-0525-796X), Yukun Yang (0009-0008-8684-3709, Northeastern University), Yanlun Yang (0009-0008-0821-3269, Northeastern University), Robin Lange (Northeastern University), Y Charles Zhang (0000-0001-7175-1491, University of California, Santa Barbara), Yidi Zhang (0000-0002-5921-0796, University of California, Santa Barbara), Joseph B Walther (0000-0003-2393-9208, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; Harvard University, USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-12-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448251396951
OpenAlexW7117353324
LanguageEN
References cited39

This study explored competing predictions about how social interactions among social media hate posters affect the sequential level of hatefulness as toxicity. Analyses involve a thousand original hateful posts and the subsequent posts by the same posters ( N = 1,227,756 posts) on Gab—a platform particularly hospitable to hate messaging—and Likes, Dislikes, and written replies from other users that affirmed or negated the initial hate posts. Likes and affirming replies were commonplace, whereas Dislikes and negation replies were rare. Getting Likes and affirming replies decreased subsequent toxicity in the short term, as did getting no responses whatsoever. Getting Dislikes increased the hatefulness of users’ next original post and their posts over the next 3 months. Results challenge both the social approval theory of online hate and the need-threat approach to effects of responses to social media hate posting

Affect (linguistics · Negation · Online discussion · Social comparison theory · Social media · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Misinformation and Its Impacts