The Aarhus ’22 Conference on Online Hostility and Bystanders
Aarhus, Denemarken
Online hostility, such as online hate speech, constitutes a challenge to democratic societies through negative effects on political participation and deliberation. This challenge is amplified by widespread apathy among cyber-bystanders.
‘The Aarhus ’22 Conference on Online Hostility and Bystanders’ aims to bring together world-leading experts for two days to discuss what drives online political hostility, what its consequences are and what counter-measures can be taken. In doing so, the conference pays attention to the role played by ordinary citizens in potentially mitigating the negative impact of online political hostility through bystander reactions, including different forms of counter speech. The conference takes stock of our current knowledge of these issues, aims to bridge otherwise scattered and departmentalized academic insights, and seek to identify the next big questions we need to solve.
The backbone of the conference will be a series of plenary talks by world-leading figures from diverse academic disciplines including political science, communication science, psychology, and computer science. The conference will include breakout paper sessions to facilitate dissemination of cutting-edge research. This event will be the world’s largest academic conference to date targeted specifically on online hostility and bystander reactions. We expect considerable interest from representatives of the media, industry stakeholders and practitioners.
