Cyberhate exposure is an issue affecting children and adolescents around the world, including the Czech Republic. We publish a new research report that maps cyberhate experiences of Czech adolescents and their parents’ and caregivers’ knowledge. Our findings are based on data from a representative sample of 3,087 Czech households collected in 2021 within the FUTURE project. The authors of the report are Marie Bedrosova, Eliska Dufkova, Nataliia Dembytska, Michaela Gerzicakova, and Lenka Dedkova.
The full report can be accessed here. It provides a comprehensive picture of adolescents’ involvement with cyberhate and their parents’ and caregivers’ cyberhate exposure and knowledge of their child’s cyberhate victimisation. The report serves as a resource for adolescents and caregivers, but also for policymakers, academics, teachers, educators, professionals working with children and families, and for the interested general public.
What is cyberhate?
Cyberhate refers to hateful and biased contents that are expressed online and via information and communication technologies. It can take many different forms, ranging from posts on social media, comments in news discussions, to audio-visual content, and extremist websites.
In our study, we focused on three types of cyberhate targeting the following group characteristics and identities:
- sexual orientation
- ethnicity, race, or nationality
- religion
Further, we investigated three types of involvement people can have with cyberhate contents:
- Cyberhate exposure – people see or hear cyberhate but do not have to be targeted by it.
- Cyberhate victimisation – people are targeted and feel victimised by cyberhate.
- Cyberhate aggression – people write, create, send, or share cyberhate.
Key findings about adolescents’ experiences
Out of the three involvement types, exposure to cyberhate is the most common, followed by victimization and perpetration.
Cyberhate exposure
- During the past six months, 59.3% of 11–16-year-old adolescents reported being exposed to cyberhate at least once.
- The gender differences were small and both boys and girls were exposed to cyberhate to a similar extent. However, cyberhate exposure increased with age and its prevalence was the highest among 15-16-year-old adolescents.
- The majority of the adolescents who were exposed to cyberhate were exposed unintentionally (81.6%), but there was 18.4% of exposed adolescents who intentionally searched for cyberhate content. Boys and older adolescents reported intentionally searching for cyberhate more than girls and younger adolescents.
- Almost all of the exposed adolescents (90.1%) reported being at least a little upset by the cyberhate exposure. However, the majority of them (52.1%) got over it immediately or felt upset only for a few minutes.
- Such feelings after exposure did not depend on age but rather on gender. Girls reported feeling upset by cyberhate exposure more than boys.
Cyberhate victimisation
- During the past six months, 15.9% of adolescents were victimised by cyberhate. We focused on three types of cyberhate victimisation. Being victimised due to their sexual orientation was the most common (12.1%). Cyberhate victimisation due to race, ethnicity, or nationality was reported by 8.0%, and due to religion by 6.2%.
- The gender differences were very small across all three victimisation categories. However, cyberhate victimisation slightly increased with age for all three categories.
Cyberhate aggression
- Cyberhate aggression was the least common cyberhate experience among adolescents. Only 7.5% of them reported being involved in it.
- Again, the most common type of aggression was cyberhate that targeted sexual orientation, which is reported by 5.9% of adolescents. Cyberhate aggression that targeted race, ethnicity, or nationality was reported by 4.3%, and cyberhate aggression that targeted religion was reported by 3.6%.
- Slightly more boys than girls reported being the aggressors in all three types of aggression. Aggression also increased with age.
Online campaigns against hatred and aggression
- Exposure to online campaigns against hatred and aggression was quite prevalent among adolescents: 63.6% of them reported being exposed to such a campaign at least once during the past month. This percentage was slightly higher for girls (66.6%) than for boys (60.5%), and the exposure increased with age.
Key findings about caregivers’ experiences and knowledge
Cyberhate exposure
- During the past 6 months, 71.9% of caregivers reported being exposed to cyberhate at least once.
- There were no gender differences between women and men.
- Almost three-quarters (70.4.%) of caregivers were rather bothered or very bothered by the exposure.
Knowledge about child’s victimisation
- Caregivers of adolescents who had been victimised underestimated the occurrence of this experience and only a minority of them knew that the child had been victimised due to sexual orientation (11.2%), due to race, ethnicity, or nationality (12.0%), and due to religion (9.3%).
- More mothers and female caregivers than fathers knew accurately that their child had been victimised.
- Caregivers of younger adolescents also knew more accurately whether their child had been
victimised.
