Hate speech in the Internet context: Unpacking the roles of Internet penetration, online legal regulation, and online opinion polarization from a transnational perspective

Abstract

Hate speech has plagued human societies for decades and severely influenced the whole world. By analyzing a balanced panel dataset covering 167 countries and 19 years derived from the V-Dem project, the relationships between critical Internet context indicators and online hate speech were disentangled, casting light on how to tackle the hate speech problem on a global scale. We found that Internet penetration was positively associated with online hate speech in general, confirming Internet's technological affordances have the potential to facilitate hate speech expression. Online legal regulation was negatively related to online hate speech but had no significant moderating effect between Internet penetration and online hate speech, reflecting an underlying tension among legal approaches’ comprehensive effects. Online opinion polarization was positively related to online hate speech and significantly moderated the relationship between Internet penetration and online hate speech, which indicated that a polarized opinion atmosphere might exacerbate hate speech and intensify intergroup conflicts. Our findings’ theoretical contributions and policy implications are further discussed.