Burn in hell – Cyberhate offending among religiously active young people

Abstract

Speaker: Atte Oksanen Presentation title: Burn in hell – Cyberhate offending among religiously active young people Co-Authors: James Hawdon (Virginia Tech, USA), Matthew Costello (Clemson University, USA), Pekka Räsänen (University of Turku, Finland), Izabela Zych (University of Cordoba, Spain), Vicente J Llorent (University of Cordoba, Spain), Catherine Blaya (University of Education of Canton de Vaud, Switzerland) and John Ryan (Virginia Tech, USA) Cyberhate (i.e., online hate or online hate speech) targets either individuals or groups with intensive and hostile statements and content. Cyberhate is a global phenomenon that typically takes the form of harassing, threatening, or insulting messages concerning, for example, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, appearance, or gender. Ideological confrontation is part of the cyberhate phenomenon and prevalent in religious extremism. It has not been, however, investigated whether religious people in general participate in cyberhate. This study investigates how religious involvement is associated with cyberhate offending. Demographically balanced data sets were collected in May 2018 from internet users aged 18 to 26 from Finland (N=500), France (N=950), Poland (N=751), Spain (N=760), the United Kingdom (N=993), and the United States (N=1109). Previously validated measures of cyberhate offending and victimizations were used. Religious activity was measured by asking respondents a) the importance of religion in their life, b) their sense of belonging to religious community, c) their participation in religious activities, and d) the religion they are most align with. Logistic regression models were adjusted for age, gender and internet activity. Prevalence of cyberhate offending ranged from 9% to 20%. Hate offending was associated with aligning to any of the asked religion. Sense of belonging to a religious community, perceived importance of religion and religious activity were associated with cyberhate offending even after adjusting for age, gender, online activity and cyberhate victimization. The results showed strong link with religiosity and cyberhate offending. Due to overlap of cyberhate offending and victimization, it is possible that one reason is that religious cyberhate victims defend themselves by aggression. In addition to this, strong ideological positions often entail distinctions between “us” and “them” that might also fuel aggression and hate towards others. These ideological distinctions and effects they entail, such as hate and negative emotions, would be especially likely in religious extremism.