Testing Hypotheses from the Social Approval Theory of Online Hate: An Analysis of 110 Million Posts from Parler (arXiv)

With an emphasis on Walther’s (2024) theory, the current study examines how social approbation may fuel hate speech online: (H1a) More hate posts result from more people approving hate messages, and (H1b) More people approving hate speech makes it more intense. The study, which examined more than 110 million Parler posts between 2018 and 2021, discovered no connection between hate post upvotes and subsequent hate postings across different time periods. Although the impacts differed over time, between-person analysis revealed a generally unfavorable association between hate speech and social approbation at the post level. These findings imply that social approval reinforcement can work differently on specialized platforms such as Parler.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10810