Seminar series Which counterspeech strategy mitigates intergroup hostility and its amplification on social media? Evidence from a field experiment on the role of empathy Add to calendar 2023-10-05 17:00 2023-10-05 19:00 Europe/Rome Which counterspeech strategy mitigates intergroup hostility and its amplification on social media? Seminar Room 2 Badia Fiesolana YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Oct 05 2023 17:00 - 19:00 CEST Seminar Room 2, Badia Fiesolana Organised by Department of Political and Social Sciences A presentation by Dominik Hangartner (ETH) in the context of the Comparative Politics Seminar Series. Online intergroup hostility is a pervasive and troubling issue, yet experimental evidence on how to curb it remains scarce. This study focuses on counterspeech as a means for users to reduce hate speech. Informed by theories from social psychology about the role of empathy in overcoming prejudice, we randomise four counterspeech strategies across the senders of 2,102 xenophobic Twitter messages. Compared to the control group, the three empathy-based strategies increase the sender's propensity to delete the xenophobic message, reduce the share of new xenophobic messages over the following four weeks, and decrease other users' amplification of the xenophobic message. Among these strategies, analogical perspective-taking, encouraging the sender to compare their own experiences of being attacked online with their discriminatory behaviour towards the outgroup, is particularly effective. In contrast, disapproval messages have weaker effects. These findings provide theoretical and actionable insights for how to reduce intergroup hostility and its online amplification. Links More information Related events Read more Seminar series 16 Nov 2023 17:00 - 18:30 CET Event cancelled, Seminar series Department of Political and Social Sciences CANCELLED: Evaluating the effects of inclusive historical narratives on democratic attitudes Speakers: Emmy Lindstam (IE University Madrid)
Read more Seminar series 16 Nov 2023 17:00 - 18:30 CET Event cancelled, Seminar series Department of Political and Social Sciences CANCELLED: Evaluating the effects of inclusive historical narratives on democratic attitudes Speakers: Emmy Lindstam (IE University Madrid)