Social Media Users’ Motives for (Not) Engaging With Hate Speech: An Explorative Investigation

Abstract

Despite extensive research on what causes social media users to recognize hate speech and what motivates their reactions to it, little is known about a crucial intermediate step that leads to users’ engagement or non-engagement with hate speech online. In our study, drawing on the uses and gratifications approach, we theoretically derived motives representing affective and entertainment, personal identity and social-integrative as well as cognitive dimensions for social media users to engage or not engage with hate speech. To empirically investigate those motives, we conducted a quota-based online survey of adult social media users in Germany ( N = 4,020) and subjected the responses to exploratory factor analysis. We found that a range of personal and social gratifications, far beyond simple expressions of approval or disapproval, encourage social media users to engage with hate speech online, whereas intentions to protect oneself and others from potential harm discourage such behavior.