Considering the fact that hate speech can increase stereotyped thinking and social distancing in a society, while – according to the authors of this study – there is still a lack of variety in the social groups under study and research into possible solutions to the problem, the study of the effects of hate speech is proposed, specifically against Chinese people and transgender people, while investigating if counter speech can offset the detrimental effects of hate speech.
For this purpose, a pre-registered online experiment was carried out, with a 2 × 3 between-subject design, varying the attacked group (Chinese people/transgender people) and the type of comments (neutral/hate speech/hate speech and counter speech) for an Austrian sample (n = 1285).
Findings in this case actually seemed to reveal no effect of hate speech on the dependent variables, indicating that citizens might not be as vulnerable to hate speech, but further study is necessary.
However, counter speech has a polarizing effect: attitudinal gaps and differences for social distancing increase between left-wing and right-wing participants if hate speech is countered.
Learn more about this study here: https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502231201091
Reference
Schäfer, S., Rebasso, I., Boyer, M. M., & Planitzer, A. M. (2024). Can We Counteract Hate? Effects of Online Hate Speech and Counter Speech on the Perception of Social Groups. Communication Research, 51(5), 553–579