Cyber Hate on the Rise

Lindsay A. Lazarski, City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism

Abstract

In October of 2003, after months of online taunting from peers at school, a 13-year-old, Vermont native, took his own life. In Hong Kong after a 31-year old woman jumped 24 stories to her death in December of 2007, a mob of bloggers, called the "human flesh search engine," accused her husband, of being responsible for her death. Internet users used his admitted affair as bait to saturate him with harassing messages and death threats. And just this month, an 88-year-old white supremacist opened fire at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC killing a security guard. The connection between these tragedies: each was either a victim or a perpetrator of cyber hate.