White Apathy and Allyship in Uncivil Racial Social Media Comments

ABSTRACT

Given the pervasiveness of racist online comments, it is important to determine what factors motivate White audiences to take actions for racial justice. We utilize and expand on the defensive effect, which proposes that uncivil online comments can mobilize action, by focusing on social identities and group-based emotions. By manipulating the race of a person tweeting in support of racial justice protests and the civility of the racist response, we find that uncivil replies lead to increased feelings of group-based anger, which is associated with willingness to respond to the comment online and take political action for racial equality. These findings highlight the mobilizing influence that anger, as opposed to other emotions, can have on White bystanders witnessing racist incivility within social media environments.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework, at https://osf.io/rhv38/?view_only=86d6a2f8be8148e1bb9996fc7459757c.

Disclosure statement

The authors have received no financial or other benefit from this research. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Notes

¹ To ensure that the three different comments and two different photos within each condition were not significantly different on any of the outcome variables, a series of ANOVAs and t-tests were computed. No significant differences were found between the three neutral or the three uncivil comments within each condition (all F-values < 2.29, all p-values > .10). There were also no significant differences between the photos for any of the variables (all t-values < 1.95, all p-values > .05). All subsequent analyses were done collapsing across the three neutral comments and across the three uncivil comments, as well as collapsing across the high and low-rated photos.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Roden

Jessica Roden (B.A., Vassar College) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication and Media, University of Michigan. Her research focuses on perceptions of race and gender activism on social media.

Muniba Saleem

Dr. Muniba Saleem is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at University of California, Santa Barbara and a faculty affiliate at the Institute of Social Research at University of Michigan. Dr. Saleem examines how media influences intergroup relations between racial, ethnic, and religious groups using social scientific methods.