Did the Risk of Exposure to Online Hate Increase After the November 2015 Paris Attacks? A Group Relations Approach

ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS 1! This is a post-print version of the article: Kaakinen, M., Oksanen, A. & Räsänen, P. (2017). Did the Risk of Exposure to Online Hate Increase After the November 2015 Paris Attacks? A Group Relations Approach. Computers in Human Behavior 2017, vol. 78, pp. 90-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.022 Did the Exposure to Online Hate Increase After the November 2015 Paris Attacks? A Group Relations Approach Abstract This study analyzed the impact of the November 2015 Paris attacks on online hate. On the basis of social identity based theories of group relations, we hypothesized that exposure to online hate will increase in social climate of fear, uncertainty, and polarization. We expected that the increase of hate will be evident in the case of online hate associated to ethnicity or nationality, religion, political views, or terrorism, but not specifically other hate-associated categories. Societal level determinants of the temporal changes in online hate exposure have not been tested before. Our study utilized two cross-sectional, demographically balanced datasets to analyze the change in online hate exposure among Finnish young people aged 15 to 30. The first sample was collected in May–June 2013 and the second one in December 2015, only 1 month after the November 2015 Paris attacks. The results supported the hypotheses indicating that the quantity and quality of online hostilities are affected by the wider societal conditions. We suggest that more evidence of societal level determinants of online hostility is needed in order to understand online hate exposure rates at different times. Keywords: online hate, uncertainty–identity theory, social categories, social identity, groups, terrorism, immigration ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 2! Did the Exposure to Online Hate Increase After November 2015 Paris Attacks? A Group Relations Approach Online hate (i.e., cyberhate, online hate speech, and other hate material) is a global phenomenon and may take many forms and target others based on their religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or some other group-defining characteristic (Banks, 2010; Hawdon, Oksanen, & Räsänen, 2016; Perry & Olsson, 2009). Notably, online hate is not an exception to the rules of interaction in the online setting but rather rooted in mainstream experience, and exposure to online hate has varied from 31 percent to 67 percent in different samples across countries (Costello, Hawdon, Ratliff, & Grantham, 2016b; Hawdon et al., 2016; Oksanen, Hawdon, Holkeri, Näsi, & Räsänen, 2014). The widely present hateful and xenophobic content online has raised concern in average online users but also in policymaking on a national and international level (Council of Europe, 2015; European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, 2016; Gagliardone, Gal, Alves, & Martinez, 2015). Hostile online behavior bears hurtful consequences to its victims (Keipi et al., 2017; Näsi et al., 2015; Tynes, 2006; Ybarra, Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhorn, 2006), but it can also be considered a threat to societal inclusiveness and a potential motivator for hateful acts offline (Awan & Zempi, 2016; Douglas, 2007; Waldron, 2012). Especially in the times of social crises, such as terrorist attacks, online hate becomes an example of the increasing acts of violence and abuse faced by ethnic and religious minorities (Awan & Zempi, 2016). When tackling online hate phenomena, we need wider empirical information on the prerequisites of online hostility. Earlier research has identified several correlates of violent online behavior on the levels of individual characteristics (e.g. low self-control, and high impulsivity, psychopathy or internalizing symptoms) and social interaction (e.g. anonymity, ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 3! low social control and group norms) (for review see e.g. Peterson & Densley, 2017). These correlates can explain why certain individuals and interactional contexts make hostile online behavior more probable. However, we lack empirical research on how wider societal (or macro) level phenomena can motivate changes in the quantity and quality of online hate over time and how this change is manifested in the viewership of such content. Witnessing tragic and unexpected societal events may explain why manifestations of anger and hate take new forms online. Previous studies have shown that online discussions escalate after dramatic events such as rampage shootings (Lindgren, 2011). These types of attacks may also act as trigger events and direct contents of online hate. Williams and Burnap (2016) have recently demonstrated how particularly racial and religious cyberhate in Twitter escalated after a murder by Islamic extremists in the United Kingdom. However, earlier studies have stressed relatively short time periods and specific discussion topics on certain social media platforms. Thus, there is a need for research-based knowledge about the dynamics of online hate during longer periods of time and the wider viewership-centered point of view. Only this would allow us to assess how frequent is the experience of being exposed to online hate among social media users and whether the probability of exposure changes over time. This study is also the first one to approach temporal change in online hate from the perspective of group relations. In this paper, we analyze how social conditions marked by fear, polarization, and uncertainty are manifested in online hate exposure after the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. On November 13, 130 people in Paris were killed in attacks by the terrorist organization ISIS, and the assault caused major societal reactions throughout Europe. The atmosphere in Europe was already insecure at the time, as several strikes by international terrorist organizations had occurred around the world that year (Haugerud, 2016). One devastating example in the European context was the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, which ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 4! led to the death of 12 people. These attacks also motivated antagonistic reactions toward immigrants, and concerns were raised that refugees were potential terrorists despite the fact that many of them were escaping the terror caused by ISIS in the Middle East (Nail, 2016). Immigration was already a matter of growing societal debate throughout Europe due to the so-called “immigration crisis” caused by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, forcing over 1.2 million people to seek out asylum in Europe, and the figures of incoming first-time asylum seekers peaked during September–November 2016 (EuroStat, 2016). Online Hate and Group relations Our intergroup stance to online hate is based on the rich tradition of social psychological research explaining how prejudices are grounded on intergroup behavior (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010; Tajfel, 1970). The starting point is grounded on previous empirical studies showing that online hate is typically targeted toward different social groups (Banks, 2010; Gagliardone et al., 2015; Hawdon et al., 2016; Perry & Olsson, 2009). Since the early days of domestic Internet, there have been both formal and informal hate groups disseminating hateful speech or ideology online. They have a wide variety of targets and ideological views, ranging from terrorist organizations to gangs of various types (Gerstenfeld, 2013, pp. 130–131). Currently, different affordances of social media make it possible for people to group up with likeminded individuals without spatial restrictions and then disseminate their thoughts. Thus, social media can provide a social context of opinion congruence and empowerment in which people are more willing to express thoughts and ideologies that might be rejected elsewhere (Chun & Lee, 2017; Lee & Chun, 2015). This makes social media a particularly suitable platform for disseminating hateful or “fringe” opinions and ideologies (Barkun, 2017). In addition, the socio-technological environment of online interaction that ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 5! enhances the group identifications and the intragroup processes of online groups can legitimate and amplify extreme attitudes (Douglas, 2007; McGarty, Lala, & Douglas, 2011; Postmes, Spears, Sakhel, & De Groot, 2001; Spears, Postmes, Lea, & Wolbert, 2002). It is perhaps not a surprise that hate is often disseminated through those channels that make group formation and engagement very easy and that facilitate the clash between different ideological views (Erjavec & Kovačič, 2012; Hutchens, Cicchirillo, & Hmielowski, 2015). Our theoretical framework of group relations is based on work done on social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory (SCT; Turner, 1985; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). First, SIT suggests that individual identity is based on social categorization and comparison between different categories (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). People conceive themselves as members of certain groups (the in-groups) and as non-members in others (the out-groups) that strive to maintain positive social identity by favorable comparison between those groups. This search for self-enhancement leads to socalled intergroup bias in which the in-group is favored over the out-groups. The activation of intergroup bias is dependent on the level of individuals’ identification with the in-group, the relevance of the comparison between the groups in a given social situation, and the relevance of the out-group as a reference point (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Second, according to SCT (Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987), an integral part of the social identity approach, identifying oneself as a representative of a certain category also leads to depersonalization (i.e. a tendency to conceive the self in terms of group identity instead of personal identity). As a consequence, one strongly identifies with the stereotypical conception of an in-group member and with the group attributes and norms (Brown, 2010; Marqués, Abrams, Paez, & Hogg, 2001; Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987). In social reality, favoring one’s in-group over perceived out-groups ranges from “mere categorical exaggerations” to extreme forms of out-group hostility (Billing, 2002, ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 6! 178). Thus, a proper understanding of societal circumstances can help us to explain why and when biased perceptions of out-group members are likely to escalate. When societal conditions threaten the satisfaction of basic human needs, such as the need for security and control over one’s own life, those out-groups perceived as responsible for the unsatisfactory circumstances are often targeted by increasing hostilities (Staub & Bar-Tal, 2003). Indeed, there is plenty of historical evidence showing how different group conflicts arise in times of fear, economic hardship, social and political segregation, and perceived in-group threats (see, e.g., Baumeister, 1997; Staub, 1989; Staub & Bar-Tal, 2003). According to the terror management theory (TMT) (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986), anxiety caused by the awareness of one’s own vulnerability and death functions as a motivator to increase intergroup bias. In other words, people will seek to buffer the terror of mortality salience by more strongly identifying with worldviews shared within one’s in-group. In addition, people are more likely to discriminate against out-groups that threaten, or do not validate, their anxiety-buffer (the in-group cultural worldview) (Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon 1990). TMT has gained support from several studies reporting that mortality salience is related to out-group discrimination and support for extreme and violent attitudes (Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010; Das, Bushman, Bezemer, Kerkhof, & Vermeulen, 2009; Greenberg et al., 1990). The theory of uncertainty-identity (UIT) (Hogg, 2007, 2014; Hogg et al., 2013) predicts that, at times of social uncertainty, individuals perceive the safety or manageability of their everyday life as endangered and, thus, tend to categorize the social reality according to more rigidly and exclusionary defined groups for overcoming the experienced uncertainty. As a consequence, the intra-group bias becomes inflated, leading to the adoption of more radical attitudes toward out-group members. A series of research has shown that, as a consequence of uncertainty, individuals tend to identify more with clearly distinctive groups ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 7! and approve more extreme ideologies and behaviors (Doosje, Lose man, & van den Bos, 2013; Esses, Stelian Medianu, & Lawson, 2013; Federico, Hunt, & Fisher, 2013; Grant & Hogg, 2012; Hogg, 2010; Hogg & Adelman, 2013). In addition to mortality salience (TMT) and uncertainty (UIT), perceived threats from out-groups on physical well-being and power (realistic threat) or values and beliefs (symbolic threat) of the in-group tend to motivate out-group discrimination (Stephan, Ybarra, & Rios Morrison, 2009; Stephan & Renfro, 2002). In addition to realistic and symbolic threats, the intergroup threat theory (ITT) has been complemented with elements of group esteem threats, being personally threatened in intergroup interactions and having negative expectations concerning the out-group, for example (Brown, 2010; Koomen, W. & Van der Pligt, 2016; Stephan & Stephan, 2000). Indeed, perceived group threats have been reported to predict out-group discrimination in various studies (Kauff et al., 2015; Riek, Mania, & Gaertner, 2006; Wirtz, van der Pligt & Doosje, 2016). Our theoretical framework suggests that societal events and conditions can shape the quantity and quality of online hate. Firstly, out-group hostilities will increase at times of fear, uncertainty and perceived threats. Secondly, people will witness more hostile messages in online space, as the social media provides an accessible forum for expressing and spreading hateful thoughts without the restrictions present in offline social networks and other media (Barkun, 2017). Finally, instead off all possible social categories, online hate is targeting categories perceived as relating to unsatisfactory conditions (Staub & Bar-Tal, 2003). The tendency of societal crises to escalate hateful reactions toward certain social categories in social media has already been demonstrated in the studies of online hate as well (see Awan & Zempi, 2016; Williams & Burnap, 2016). ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 8! Immigration Crisis and Social Uncertainty in Finland Finland is a Nordic country with 5.5 million habitants and a relatively low ethnic diversity (United Nations, 2013). Finland, like other Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland), has been characterized by a strong welfare tradition that includes free education and healthcare and extensive income distribution (Esping-Andersen, 1999). Finland, like the rest of the world, was hit by the economic recession in 2007–2008, and the economy has been flat ever since. Economic problems have also concerned average citizens who have faced record figures of payment default (Oksanen, Aaltonen, & Rantala, 2015). The so-called “immigration crisis” in Europe, caused by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, started during the time when people already felt uncertain about the future due to the stagnating economy. During 2015, Finland received over five times as many asylum seekers as in the previous year, and the total amount of immigrants rose over 32,000. The peak of the crisis was during the autumn period, and different immigration centers were opened throughout the country. Clearly, the biggest group of immigrants came from Iraq (20,485), followed by Afganistan (5,214), Somalia (1,981), and Syria (877). The theme of immigration was a matter of heated debate in Finnish society (Silvennoinen, 2016). One example was the Rajat Kiinni (close the borders) Facebook group, which organized anti-immigration events starting from September 2015. Many of these antiimmigration events often targeted Islam as well. Along with anti-immigration events, the year 2015 in Finland witnessed a 50 percent increase in hate crimes and the rise of right-wing extremism and street patrol groups such as Soldiers of Odin that were organized via Facebook (Finnish Ministry of the Interior, 2016a). Accused of sexual harassment and rape cases, immigrants were also widely discussed in both traditional media and social media (Silvennoinen, 2016). Also, scandalous “fake media” online journals, such as MV-lehti, started to gain massive popularity. ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 9! The economic recession has also been visible in the Finnish societal immigration discourse (Keskinen, 2016). Traditionally, the Finnish national identity has been based on the Nordic egalitarian welfare model, but this policy has faced increasing pressure at the times of recession and growing demands for economic austerity in Finland. In some public opinions immigrants have been seen as a threat to the welfare state and some have requested more nationalistic and exclusive welfare policies that would deny the welfare benefits from the immigrants. In social media, Finns were divided between those opposing immigration and those taking a more liberal stance. This is the result of a longer continuum in which the changing mediascape and new media technology have allowed for the formation of anti-immigration online communities (e.g., Hommaforum) and their social and political mobilization (Horsti, 2015). The escalated division between groups with anti-immigration stances and more tolerant ideologies has created an ongoing debate that is salient in Finnish online forums but also in mainstream media. The mainstream media was also often criticized for letting the anti-immigration movement set the agenda for public discussion and, of course, for staying silent about immigration-related topics by the anti-immigration movement (Horsti, 2015). The year 2015 can be regarded as the year that tinged social confrontation and culminated in the Paris tragedy of November 13. The victims and the proximal consequences of the assault were located in Paris and France, but the media-based contact extended its psychosocial impact throughout Europe and the rest of the world. This phenomenon of “secondhand terrorism” (see Comer & Kendal, 2007) is manifested in extended uncertainty (i.e., a social climate that is determined by continuous insecurity and fear of future attacks based on possibilities instead of probabilities). This effect of extended uncertainty can be even stronger in countries with infrequent terrorist assaults such as Finland (Comer, Bry, Poznanski, & Golik, 2016). The social climate of fear is perhaps mirrored in the fact that the ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 16! Discussion In this article, we analyzed how the exposure to online hate had changed in quantity and quality as a consequence of public uncertainty after the Paris attacks preceded by prolonged economic recession and escalated immigration debate. The measurement of online hate was done over the time period of 2013 and 2015, just a month after the Paris attacks. Our theoretical presumption was that out-group hostilities will increase at times of fear, uncertainty and perceived threat (Hogg, 2007; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Stephan, Ybarra, & Rios Morrison, 2009) and, therefore, people will encounter more hate content in online space. In addition, we presumed that both the quantity and quality of online hate will change as hostilities will be targeted towards social categories perceived as related to fear, uncertainty and threats (Awan & Zempi, 2016; Staub & Bar-Tal, 2003; Williams & Burnap, 2016). Analysis confirmed that encountering hate content online was more frequent after the Paris attacks, as young people were 27 percent more likely to be exposed to online hate at the end of 2015 than they were in the 2013 sample. The finding is in line with earlier research showing that, as a consequence of tragic societal events, hateful messaging will increase in social media (Awan & Zempi, 2016; Williams & Burnap, 2016). When interpreted through our theoretical framework of social psychological theories of group relations (Greenberg et al., 1986; Hogg, 2007, 2014; Stephan & Stephan, 2000), this result shows how times of insecurity and uncertainty tend to inflate the intergroup bias of favoring in-group members over the out-group members. As a result, people are more willing to adopt critical and even extreme stances and behavior toward out-groups. In online spaces, this is manifested in increased probability to encounter hostilities expressed toward social groups. It is also likely that individuals with hateful opinions perceive increasing presence in online hate content as ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 17! empowering which, in turn, further lowers the threshold of expressing one’s own hostile thoughts (Barkun, 2017; Chun & Lee, 2017). In addition, we expected that people would witness more hostility associated with social categories relating to the Paris attacks, as well as the political and ethnic divides preceding them (e.g ethnicity or nationality, religious conviction, political views, terrorism). We also expected that no similar effect would be found in the case of categories not related to the social climate of extended uncertainty (e.g. gender, sexual orientation, disability and appearance). Our analysis confirmed that young people encountered more online hate in categories related to a social climate of fear and uncertainty, but there was no similar effect in the case of nonrelated categories. According to our theoretical framework, the activation of intergroup bias is dependent on the relevance of the intergroup comparison and the out-group as a reference point, in addition to individuals’ identification with the in-group (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Here, categories of ethnicity or nationality, religious conviction, political views and terrorism have become more accessible references for comparison and conceptualization of social reality. Increased hostilities toward individuals and social groups perceived to share some features with perpetrators of criminal public events has also been reported in earlier research (Awan & Zempi, 2016; Williams & Burnap, 2016), even though there is obviously is no actual connection between them. Limitations In our analyses, the problems relating to causal interference using observational data were taken into account by using a two-step analytical strategy in which a nearest-neighbor matching, based on estimated propensity scores, was first performed to enhance the comparability between two datasets (or the treatment and control groups). Then a logistic regression was conducted with the matched dataset for estimating the change in online hate ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 18! exposure after the Paris attacks. Even though this analytical strategy is a recommended way of assessing causal effects with observational data (Rubin & Thomas, 2000), the hypothesized causal relationship between the Paris attacks and the increase in online hate cannot be unquestionably confirmed by using cross-sectional data. Another possible limitation of the present study is the subjective and category themebased measurement of the online hate. This approach has, however, also been utilized elsewhere (Costello et al., 2016a; Costello et al., 2016b; Hawdon et al., 2016; Oksanen et al., 2014). For example, as we assessed how the self-reported exposure to hateful material online had changed between the two chosen time points, the increase in hate content exposure could be, at least partly, explained by some individuals becoming more sensitive to recognizing hostile online content. On the basis of the category theme-based measurement, in turn, we cannot tell which specific groups were targeted by the encountered hostilities. However, we decided to utilize the category theme-based approach instead of the specific group-based one in order to analyze which social divides had escalated in social media. As there is a multitude of possible grouping criteria for political views, for example, our focus here was not to examine which ideological groups were those targeted by online hate but to analyze whether the political views were used as a social discrimination criterion in the first palace. Of course, there is a long and highly important tradition of social psychological research examining xenophobic attitudes and prejudiced thinking toward specific social groups (see, e.g., Brown, 2010) as well as studies analyzing how certain groups are being exposed to online hate (for hate expressed toward the Muslim population, see, e.g., Awan & Zempi, 2016; Williams & Burnap, 2016). We believe there is a need for research-based knowledge on online hate generated by both approaches. ONLINE HATE AFTER PARIS ATTACKS ! 19! Conclusions The hateful online content is apparent in social media interactions (Costello et al., 2016a; Hawdon et al., 2016; Oksanen et al., 2014). As the online hate is damaging for both individual victims (Keipi et al., 2017; Näsi et al., 2015; Tynes, 2006; Ybarra, Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhorn, 2006) and societies as collectives (Awan & Zempi, 2016; Waldron, 2012), it has become a target of national and international policy making and interventions (Council of Europe, 2015; European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, 2016; Gagliardone et al, 2015). However, more research based knowledge is needed on why hostile online behavior emerges and how it changes over time. Individual and interaction level explanations (see Peterson & Densley, 2017) can reveal why some individuals and social contexts are more prone to online hostility. However, these explanations do not cover the fact that hate content spreading in social media appear to mainly attack certain social categories and this selectivity is shaped by temporal societal conditions. 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