Countering Ethnic Minority-Targeted Hate Speech in a Multicultural Society

Within the hate speech scholarship, the predominant focus has been the written text of media platforms, limited to a few national contexts such as the USA, UK and Germany. Conversely, the present study takes an audience-based perspective and an interventionist approach, shedding light on a less examined society (Australia) and on an under-researched ethnic group (Chinese Australians). Through online experiment method (N = 300), it investigates the effectiveness of two audience-focused countermeasures (inducing empathy and constructing collective national identity) in mitigating the negative influences of ethnic minority-targeted hate narratives and in promoting bystander intervention willingness. It then examines the moderating roles of multiculturalism, online political efficacy, and perceived threat. Practical implications for hate speech governance and intergroup relations are discussed. This study examines the relevance of, and compares it with, studies on hate speech in the American context, calling for a globalized perspective to resist racialized hate speech.