Hate on the net

Hate on the Net

With the occurrence of recent terrorist events in New York, there has been a backlash of hatred towards certain ethnic and religious groups. Images of Palestinians celebrating on the streets after the World Trade Center bombing and angry Americans vandalizing mosques and other Islamic places of worship within our nation have plagued our television following this horrific ordeal. Yet the media has ignored or diverted its attention away from displays of hatred found on the internet. Does hate on the net influence our perception of certain individuals, political, ethnic, or racial groups and would this result in the violent actions of hatred some of us partake? This is exactly what this article by Evelyn Kallen attempts to address. A link is constructed between the two where the author shows that "cyber hate" promoted on the internet by certain hate groups incite hatred and promote harmful actions against different types of subgroups in our society.

Sign for "colored" waiting room at a Greyhound bus...

Image from: http://www.september11news.com/WTC_199...

Human Rights Review

The author clearly utilizes the inductive method of social research by first supplying us with her observations of hatred on the net, then analyzing those messages, and then finally supplying a tentative conclusion that hate propaganda on the internet does in fact promote hateful acts against minority groups. In the beginning, Mrs. Kallen provides us with a legitimate definition of human rights which she later describes to be applied in the conceptual framework of her paper. After a short introduction of human rights pertaining to racism, she lays down her empirical evidence. Specific examples of hateful messages are shared within the context of what she calls "the paradigm of hate" and which I see to be very similar to the conflict paradigm introduced by Babbi. Mrs. Kallen then analyzes these messages and attempts to show a direct correlation between these hate messages...