Can We Counteract Hate? Effects of Online Hate Speech and Counter Speech on the Perception of Social Groups (Sage)

We conducted a pre-registered online experiment 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 reveal no effect of hate speech on the dependent variables, indicating that citizens might not be as vulnerable to hate speech after all. 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.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00936502231201091?icid=int.sj-full-text.citing-articles.3