<
https://gizmodo.com/online-trolls-actually-just-assholes-all-the-time-stud-1847575210>
"The internet doesn’t turn people into assholes so much as it acts as a massive
megaphone for existing ones, according to work by researchers at Aarhus
University.
In a study published in the American Political Science Review, the researchers
used representative surveys and behavioral studies from the U.S. and Denmark to
establish the reason why people broadly perceive the online environment as more
hostile than offline interaction. A pre-print version of the article is
available here.
The team considered the mismatch hypothesis, which in the context of online
behavior refers to the theory that there is a conflict between human adaptation
for face-to-face interpersonal interaction and the newer, impersonal online
environment. That hypothesis more or less amounts to the idea that humans who
would be nicer to each other in person might feel more inclined to get nasty
when interacting with other pseudonymous internet users. The researchers found
little evidence for that.
Instead, their data pointed to online interactions largely mirroring offline
behavior, with people predisposed to aggressive, status-seeking behavior just
as unpleasant in person as behind a veil of online anonymity, and choosing to
be jerks as part of a deliberate strategy rather than as a consequence of the
format involved. They also found some evidence that less hostile people simply
aren’t as interested in talking about politics on the internet. These results
were similar in both the U.S. and Denmark, even though the two countries have
very different political cultures with differing levels of polarization. (For
example, a hostile far-right mob organized on social media didn’t recently
storm the Danish Parliament.)"
Via Joerg Fliege, who wrote "Water is truly wet" and Doug Senko.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
