Listen to Me! Target Perceptions of Digital Hate: A Scoping Review of Recent Research

Abstract

Digital hate is typically targeted toward individuals or groups based on distinct attributes. Despite numerous studies on targets of digital hate, there is a lack of a systematic meta-perspective on targets’ perceptions of digital hate. Therefore, this scoping review aims to assess available definitions and characteristics of targets, consequences of digital hate together with targets’ reactions and coping strategies, dominant methodologies, and identified future outlooks of digital hate victimization research. To achieve this goal, we systematically searched two established databases (i.e., Web of Science and Scopus) for research published from 2020 onwards using a comprehensive search string of digital hate terms. Out of the 12,978 publications screened for eligibility, 230 studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. All selected studies were in English and featured targets of digital hate as the sample. The findings indicate a lack of conceptual clarity, a strong dominance of Global North perspectives, a scarcity of research on children, older adults, men, and people from minority groups, and a need for experimental and longitudinal quantitative research methods, as well as qualitative and mixed-method research. Most importantly, we found that victimization consequences and coping strategies adopted by targets have been researched without sufficiently accounting for inconsistently privileged and intersectional identities and without examining contextual effectiveness. This review, therefore, emphasizes the necessity of taking an intersectional approach to gain a thorough understanding of targets’ digital hate victimization experiences and both short- and long-term coping effectiveness.