Contents
If a popular site has a lot of racist comments left by trolls, it is more likely that other visitors to that site will also allow themselves to be racist and intolerant.
In an experiment conducted by scientists at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand1, 137 volunteers aged 18 to 50 participated; while they thought they were participating in a completely different experiment. Subjects were asked to read an online article about a proposal by the Education Commission to introduce additional scholarships for international students, especially those from East Asia. However, the prospects for this proposal are dim, as several Asian students have recently been convicted of cheating in exams.
Read more:
- Why do we need stereotypes?
After the participants read the note, they were invited to leave their own opinion in the comments, but for this they had to scroll down the page, which already had other people’s comments. The researchers randomly showed subjects a dozen racist comments about Asian students. Other participants saw a similar amount of anti-racist rhetoric defending students and advising them not to use negative stereotypes about Asians. All of these comments were taken from real sites.
The participants were then given a reaction speed test that indirectly revealed their unconscious attitudes towards Asians. They also filled out a questionnaire in which they directly reported their attitudes towards this ethnic group. It turned out that those who read racist comments were highly biased towards Asians (both unconsciously and consciously). Their comments were also more racist on average.
Read more:
- Is there a racist in all of us?
“In today’s world, it is important to understand how other people’s comments on the Internet can affect our own perceptions and attitudes towards other people. Apparently, racist comments can even reinforce our unconscious prejudice towards other ethnic groups, although it is not yet clear how persistent this effect will be. On the other hand, anti-racist comments can have a positive effect,” sums up Kumar Yogeeswaran, one of the authors of the study.
Australia, where this study was conducted, is one of the most sensitive countries to cyber-racism. There is a special , which explains the very concept of cyber-racism as a form of racial hatred and cyberbullying. Manifestations of racism online include racist websites, texts, images, blogs, as well as pictures, videos and comments, both on websites and on social networks. The creators of the anti-racism educational resource also publish research data, the basics of legislation in this area, and contacts of organizations where victims of cyber-racism can get help.
1 M. Hsueh et al. «Leave Your Comment Below: Can Biased Online Comments Influence Our Own Prejudicial Attitudes and Behaviors?», Human Communication Research, March 2015.