Racism in the electronic age: Role of online forums in expressing racial attitudes about American Indians.

Abstract

This study investigated racial attitudes about American Indians that are electronically expressed in newspaper online forums by examining the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux nickname and logo used for their athletic teams. Using a modified Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) methodology to analyze over 1,000 online forum comments, the research team generated themes, domains, and core ideas from the data. The core ideas included (a) surprise, (b) power and privilege, (c) trivialization, and (d) denigration. The findings indicated that a critical mass of online forum comments represented ignorance about American Indian culture and even disdain toward American Indians by providing misinformation, perpetuating stereotypes, and expressing overtly racist attitudes toward American Indians. Results of this study were explained through the lens of White power and privilege, as well as through the framework of two-faced racism (Picca & Feagin, 2007). Results provide support to previous findings that indicate the presence of Native-themed mascots, nicknames, or logos can negatively impact the psychological well-being of American Indians.

“Who is really British anyway?”: A thematic analysis of responses to online hate materials

“…Similar distancing strategies have been observed in previous work (e.g. Angie et al, 2011;Coffey & Woolworth, 2004;Douglas et al, 2005;Erjavec & Kovačič, 2012;Faulkner & Bliuc, 2016;Moghaddam, 2005;Mols & Jetten, 2014;Steinfeldt et al, 2010) where the use of (hateful) language has been described as a means of creating negative social comparisons and reinforcing existing stereotypes -or 'othering'. Here, this 'othering' strategy served not only as a means of Making sense of Emma but, paradoxically, also led to Meeting hatred with hatred, as expressed in Emma's dehumanisation.…”

“…However, to what extent does controversial web content succeed in influencing or changing people's actual attitudes or views? Steinfeldt et al (2010) found that online newspaper forums often provide misinformation about specific groups (i.e. American Indians, in their case) which, in turn, can reinforce existing negative stereotypes and thus facilitate the expression of racist attitudes.…”

“…They also found that those who opposed racist views/acts rarely used this strategy when expressing their views online. Given that expressions of racial attitudes are no longer socially acceptable (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960;Furnham, 1986;Gawronski, LeBel, & Peters, 2007;Joinson, 1998;Steinfeldt et al, 2010), it does not seem surprising that moral disengagement is predominantly observed in those supporting racist attitudes.…”

Why and when do racial microaggressions hurt? The role of perceived diversity credentials

“…First, online forums are popular, contemporary forms of communication and their ability to facilitate potentially racist messages allowed us to examine the perpetuation of racial microaggressions (Steinfeldt, Foltz, Kaladow, Carlson, Pagano, Benton, & Steinfeldt, 2010). Second, incorporating an online interaction allowed us to create a cover story on computer communication and standardize large amounts of dialogue.…”

Discursive Approaches to Race and Racism

“…Much of this research has focused on blatantly racist discourse in online texts, emphasizing the ways in which the relative anonymity afforded by the Internet provides for unrestrained expressions of racism of the sort that had been assumed to have become less prevalent as a result of the contemporary anti-racist norms discussed above (see, e.g., Coffey & Woolworth, 2004;Steinfeldt et al, 2010). These studies have thus considered the use of online platforms to propagate crudely racist discourses, whether directly, through the coordinated rhetoric of far-right political organizations and hate groups (e.g., Atton, 2006;Daniels, 2009a) or individual contributions to news sites and other online forums (e.g., Cleland, 2013;Erjavec & Kovačič, 2012), as well as more indirectly under the guise of humor, on sites devoted to the sharing of racist jokes (e.g., Billig, 2001;Weaver, 2011).…”