How Cyber Users Experience and Respond to Racism:Evidence from an Online Survey

This chapter details the main findings of a survey conducted in December 2013 as a part of the Australian online Cyber Racism and Community Resilience (CRaCR) Project. Over 2,000 Internet users across Australia were surveyed regarding their encounters with cyber racism, the impact of these encounters and their responses to them. This group included targets, witnesses and authors of cyber racism. These survey data indicate that a significant number of Internet users regularly encounter racism online, primarily on Facebook, online news commentary and YouTube; both as targets and witnesses. This research also reveals that a small but prolific group are publishing intentional, exclusionary and hurtful racist content online, which is then being seen by a much wider audience of Internet users