Hate commentators often waive their anonymity online

Hate comments are being spread anonymously less and less on the social web.Politicians and celebrities, companies and organizations as well as people of certain nationalities and the socially disadvantaged - the list of those affected by hate storms on social media is long. Insulting, threatening or derogatory comments are now part of everyday digital life. Possible consequences of these virtual witch hunts, whether justified or not, include loss of reputation, resignation, dismissal, social exclusion or falling share prices. According to popular opinion, the supposed anonymity online lowers the inhibition threshold for posting hate comments. Non-anonymous hate commentators are becoming increasingly acceptableHowever, a study by researchers at the University of Zurich has now come to a completely different conclusion: the team, led by Katja Rost from the Institute of Sociology, was able to show that non-anonymous online haters are increasingly the rule rather than the exception. The analysis of more than 500,000 socio-political comments from around 1,600 online petitions on the German platform www.openpetition.de between 2010 and 2013 showed that the authors of hate comments who post under their full name are even more frequent than anonymous hate commentators.many online news portals or social media platforms are keen to put a stop to the brutalization of language in comment columns or on social networks. "The call to abolish anonymity on the internet is often heard as a means of promoting a civilized digital discussion culture," explains sociology doctoral student Lea Stahel. "According to the conventional wisdom, anonymity inhibits people from committing obviously wrongful acts because it allows them to shed their personal responsibility and protects them from immediate consequences." Why do many online hate commentators still refrain from appearing anonymously? Those who reveal their anonymity are more credible and popularFirstly, many online haters simply do not consider it necessary to be anonymous. Rather than purely personal acts of revenge, hate comments are often reactions to violations of a social norm such as adherence to environmental or plagiarism standards or violations of socially desirable behavior such as political correctness. Why should authors of hate posts who justify their protest as a moral duty and stand up for a just cause hide? Moreover, an online hater can assume that their aggressive behavior will hardly ever be punished. It is considered highly unlikely that a busy politician or a struggling company would sue him or her if a whole flood of insults had inundated those affected, says Stahel.Ban on anonymity does not prevent hate stormsSecondly, hate commentators can more easily convince and mobilize others in their social networks if they use their real name. By doing so, they signal a willingness to take risks to express their opinions publicly and thus earn a trust bonus. Ideally, this can increase their social status, as they move in "circles of friends" in digital networks such as Facebook, where their statements resonate thanks to "shares" and "likes". "The abolition of anonymity therefore does not automatically lead to the disappearance of hate storms, but possibly even to an increase in them," Lea Stahel points out.