Ethnic Cyberhate and Prejudice: A Bidirectional Relationship

Nowadays, it might be interesting to explore the topic of cyberhate and particularly ethnic cyberhate. The importance of addressing this issue stems from the fact that the phenomena of victimization including bullying and attack through hate speech is among the causes of high malaise in minorities. For these reasons, our purpose is to briefly describe ethnic cyberhate phenomenon and to explore the relationship between exposition to online ethnic hate speech and the prejudice against ethnic minorities. As we will explain, increasing exposure to online ethnic hate speech the sensitivity to online hate decreases and its expression becomes more accepted; this is related to an increase in feelings of disapproval for the outgroup. On the othere other hand, prejudice seems to influence people’s worldview and generate biases that lead to justifying the offenses and the insults or to defend the group affected. Therefore, the relationship between the two phenomena seems to be bidirectional, and we propose to explore this relation in the future to individuate moderators and to intervene on the spread of online hate speech.