@article{2018:leonhard:perceiving,
title = {Perceiving threat and feeling responsible. How severity of hate speech, number of bystanders, and prior reactions of others affect bystanders’ intention to counterargue against hate speech on Facebook},
year = {2018},
note = {Since platform operators are severely challenged to cope with hate
speech on social networking sites, countering by individual users is
all the more important. Still, it remains unclear to what extent
users’ intention to actually interfere against hate speech is
determined by the context and content of hate speech. Drawing from
research on bystander intervention online, we conducted an online
experiment (n = 304) to explore the effects of severity of hate
speech, number of bystanders, and prior reactions of others on
Facebook users’ intention to counterargue. Results show that users
are less willing to react if the number of bystanders is high, hence
providing support for a bystander effect. Also, prior reactions of
others lower users’ feeling of responsibility to intervene
countering hate speech. However, we demonstrate that the severity of
hate speech increases users’ intention to counterargue if they
consider it threatening and concurrently feel responsible to act.},
journal = {SCM Studies in Communication and Media},
pages = {555--579},
author = {Leonhard, Larissa and Rueß, Christina and Obermaier, Magdalena and Reinemann, Carsten},
volume = {7},
number = {4}
}