Hate speech never comes with harbinger. It is the statements that “attack or delegitimize” particular individuals on social media platforms (Schofield and Davidson, 2017). We can tell how powerful hate speech is – it can destruct people’s life when some of them get depressed and some suicided because of these words online. Moreover, hate speech doesn’t always target at individuals, it may target at groups of particular race, gender, country of origin. Almagor (2011, p. 1) suggests that hate speech be defined “as bias-motivated, hostile, malicious speech aimed at a person or a group of people because of some of their actual or perceived innate characteristics”.
There are some factors that facilitate the environment where people can speak up and realize their individualism even a part of it is always resentful. In terms of sociological development, as American society is able to satisfy people’s basic demand in living, the individualism and unique psychological demand are uncovered. According to Riesman et al. (1950), modern society tends to stop chasing fortune and listen to their own minds and thereby the society gradually becomes inner-directed and other-directed. As a result, the sociological progress allows people to have more efforts in focusing on their mental and emotional need and to be outspoken.
But that’s not enough. That’s why we have social media – from the aspect of technological support, emerging social media offers platforms for users to speak up and find people who hold the same value. Social media is open-to-all as long as you can afford a device to access it. It breaks the walls between individuals and allows them to post any statements without paying much price for their speech like what they do in the real world.
Hence, hate speech becomes a catalyst in helping form network ties based on particular values or stereotypes. White nationalist form a group of members who “ seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity” by posting hate speech on social media (Beirich, H. & Hicks, K., 2009). They recruit more members by spreading hate speech on social media and, with those members, they plan events and activities and gather to stage demonstrations offline to enhance their volume and publicity. Afterward, they retrieve back to social media platforms to share the audios and videos of their demonstration in order to catch more eyes from the public and attract more potential members. The group improves its quality and quantity by improving their public image with the aid of exposure on known media. Also, the members remain strong ties based on the same race and gender, and the same superiority over any race other than their own race, while they gain emotional aid from each member (Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. 2012).
Without a doubt, there is a public outcry against the radical white nationalism. The groups who are targeted at by white nationalist group with hate speech pay them back with hate speech in return. Social media users label them with “white supremacist” and “neo-nazi” and state protest against the certain bias as a strongly-tied network group (Cott, E, 2018). As such, hate speech form social ties which act as rivals to each other. It looks like that social media has become the new and modern battlefield where hate speech serves as weapons for different groups with different values.
By Xinyi Tan, Student from Boston University’s Emerging Media Studies program.
References
Almagor, R. C. (2011). Fighting hate and bigotry on the internet. Policy & Internet, 3(3),
1–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.2202/1944-2866.1059.
Beirich, H. & Hicks, K. (2009). Hate Crimes. Greenwood Publishing. “Chapter 7: White nationalism in America”.
Cott, E. (2018). How Our Reporter Uncovered a Lie That Propelled an Alt-Right Extremist’s Rise. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/insider/confronting-a-white-nationalist-eli-mosley.html
Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The New Social Operating System. MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjq62
Riesman, D., Denny, R., & Glazer, N. (1950). The lonely crowd; a study of the changing American character. New Haven, CT, US: Yale University Press.