Alice and the Mad Hater : How social media affect and enables counterstrategies on the reception of offensive content

With online communication being increasingly integrated with our everyday lives, internet hate has become a growing problem. This is receiving growing attention in the media and research. In recent years, scientists have begun to shift their focus from the hate itself, to responses to these forms of violation. However, research has been mainly solution orientated and for example focused on legal aspects. Thus, we maintain that the field lacks a media technology based analysis, which this paper intends to contribute to. The aim of this study is to investigate what impact design and functionality in social media has on its users, with relation to user’s counter-strategies on the reception of offensive content. Note that this study is restricted to social media, and not focused on digital media at large. Within the framework of this essay, we have conducted three focus-group interviews and nethnographic studies. The empirical data from our focus groups has determined which social media platforms we examined in the nethnographic study, and subsequently in our analysis. The collected data has been analysed in relation to previous research on social media and internet hate. We have also used theories on resistance, suppression techniques, space of possible actions, norms and the relationship between offline/online and front stage/back stage. The analysis has resulted in five themes that describe the following key findings: 1) social media's positive connotations are problematic in relation to offensive content, but the receivers of internet hate are inventive in working around embedded norms, 2) sometimes no response is the best defence, 3) the culture around the like-function has a significant role in the resistance to internet hate on social media, 4) the shrinking distance between the world online and offline, as well as public and private rooms, affects everyday resistance to violations on social media, and 5) production of positive content and interaction with help of built-in functions are perceived as ways to affect the climate and cooperative resistance. We do not purport to provide technical or design-related proposals for development. However, we believe that our results, among other things, can be used for future development and improvement of social media platforms, and as a basis for further research on resistance to violations on social media