Behind the Counter: Exploring the Motivations and Barriers of Online Counterspeech Writing

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ping, Kaike, Kumar, Anisha, Ding, Xiaohan, Rho, Eugenia
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Ping, Kaike
Kumar, Anisha
Ding, Xiaohan
Rho, Eugenia
author_facet Ping, Kaike
Kumar, Anisha
Ding, Xiaohan
Rho, Eugenia
contents Current research mainly explores the attributes and impact of online counterspeech, leaving a gap in understanding of who engages in online counterspeech or what motivates or deters users from participating. To investigate this, we surveyed 458 English-speaking U.S. participants, analyzing key motivations and barriers underlying online counterspeech engagement. We presented each participant with three hate speech examples from a set of 900, spanning race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability, and requested counterspeech responses. Subsequent questions assessed their satisfaction, perceived difficulty, and the effectiveness of their counterspeech. Our findings show that having been a target of online hate is a key driver of frequent online counterspeech engagement. People differ in their motivations and barriers towards engaging in online counterspeech across different demographic groups. Younger individuals, women, those with higher education levels, and regular witnesses to online hate are more reluctant to engage in online counterspeech due to concerns around public exposure, retaliation, and third-party harassment. Varying motivation and barriers in counterspeech engagement also shape how individuals view their own self-authored counterspeech and the difficulty experienced writing it. Additionally, our work explores people's willingness to use AI technologies like ChatGPT for counterspeech writing. Through this work we introduce a multi-item scale for understanding counterspeech motivation and barriers and a more nuanced understanding of the factors shaping online counterspeech engagement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_17116
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Behind the Counter: Exploring the Motivations and Barriers of Online Counterspeech Writing
Ping, Kaike
Kumar, Anisha
Ding, Xiaohan
Rho, Eugenia
Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Current research mainly explores the attributes and impact of online counterspeech, leaving a gap in understanding of who engages in online counterspeech or what motivates or deters users from participating. To investigate this, we surveyed 458 English-speaking U.S. participants, analyzing key motivations and barriers underlying online counterspeech engagement. We presented each participant with three hate speech examples from a set of 900, spanning race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability, and requested counterspeech responses. Subsequent questions assessed their satisfaction, perceived difficulty, and the effectiveness of their counterspeech. Our findings show that having been a target of online hate is a key driver of frequent online counterspeech engagement. People differ in their motivations and barriers towards engaging in online counterspeech across different demographic groups. Younger individuals, women, those with higher education levels, and regular witnesses to online hate are more reluctant to engage in online counterspeech due to concerns around public exposure, retaliation, and third-party harassment. Varying motivation and barriers in counterspeech engagement also shape how individuals view their own self-authored counterspeech and the difficulty experienced writing it. Additionally, our work explores people's willingness to use AI technologies like ChatGPT for counterspeech writing. Through this work we introduce a multi-item scale for understanding counterspeech motivation and barriers and a more nuanced understanding of the factors shaping online counterspeech engagement.
title Behind the Counter: Exploring the Motivations and Barriers of Online Counterspeech Writing
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17116