Four eyes, two truths: Explaining heterogeneity in perceived severity of digital hate against immigrants
- Author(s)
- Thomas Kirchmair, Kevin Koban, Jörg Matthes
- Abstract
Drawing on theories related to interpersonal and intergroup behavior, this study investigated effects of personality traits (i.e., empathy and identity insecurity) and attitudes (i.e., anti-migration attitudes and social dominance orientation) on the perceived severity of digital hate against immigrants in Austria. Findings of autoregressive path modeling using two-wave panel data revealed that empathic suffering and egalitarianism positively predicted perceived severity, while anti-migrant attitudes exhibited a negative prediction. In terms of interactions between personality and attitudes, we observed that the prediction of empathic suffering becomes less relevant for egalitarian individuals, which indicates an overwriting process that might be a promising way to counteract socially harmful digital hate perceptions. Implications for research on annotation tasks and hate interventions are discussed.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication
- Journal
- Communications - The European Journal of Communication Research
- Volume
- 49
- Pages
- 468-490
- No. of pages
- 23
- ISSN
- 0341-2059
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2023-0133
- Publication date
- 04-2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508007 Communication science
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/95efb33a-fc80-42fa-8609-669af7ff13b9