Defending Others Online: The Influence of Observing Formal and Informal Social Control on One’s Willingness to Defend Cyberhate Victims

Matthew Costello (), James Hawdon, Ashley V. Reichelmann, Atte Oksanen, Catherine Blaya, Vicente J. Llorent, Pekka Räsänen and Izabela Zych
Additional contact information
Matthew Costello: Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice, College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, USA
James Hawdon: Center for Peace Studies and Violence Studies, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Ashley V. Reichelmann: Center for Peace Studies and Violence Studies, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
Atte Oksanen: Faulty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, 33100 Tampere, Finland
Catherine Blaya: URMIS, Department of Education Sciences, Université Côte d’Azur, 06103 Nice, France
Vicente J. Llorent: Department de Educación, University of Cordoba, 14001 Cordoba, Spain
Pekka Räsänen: School of Economics, University of Turku, 20100 Turku, Finland
Izabela Zych: Department de Educación, University of Cordoba, 14001 Cordoba, Spain

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 15, 1-14

Abstract: This paper examines factors correlated with online self-help—an informal form of social control vis-à-vis intervention—upon witnessing a cyberhate attack. Using online surveys from 18- to 26-year-old respondents in the United States, we explore the roles of various types of online and offline formal and informal social control mechanisms on the enactment of self-help through the use of descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression. The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that online collective efficacy is positively related to self-help, as is having close ties to individuals and groups offline and online. Formal online social control, however, is not significantly related to engaging in self-help. Other findings demonstrate that personal encounters with cyberhate affect the likelihood that an individual will intervene when witnessing an attack, and that individuals with high levels of empathy are more likely to intervene to assist others. This work indicates that pro-social online behavior is contagious and can potentially foster online spaces in which harmful behaviors, such as propagating cyberhate, are not condoned.

Keywords: cyberhate; social control; self-help; online hate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/15/6506/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/15/6506/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:15:p:6506-:d:1209165

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().