Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media

Abstract

Abstract Online intergroup hostility is a pervasive and troubling issue, yet experimental evidence on how to curb it remains scarce. This study examines counterspeech as a user-driven strategy to reduce hate speech. Drawing on theories that suggest adopting the perspective of minority groups can reduce prejudice, we randomized four counterspeech strategies across the senders of 2102 xenophobic Twitter messages. Compared to a passive control group, we find that the pooled effect of the three perspective-centered strategies—traditional perspective-taking, analogical perspective-taking, and perspective getting—increased the likelihood that the sender deleted their xenophobic message by +0.14 SD ( $$p=0.003$$ ), decreased the number of likes the xenophobic message received by others (− 0.133 SD, $$p=0.040$$ ), but yielded a limited and not statistically significant estimate for the share of xenophobic messages the sender posted over the following four weeks (− 0.084 SD, $$p=0.178$$ ). Differences between the three perspective-centered strategies were generally small and not statistically significant, though analogical perspective-taking—encouraging senders to compare their own experiences of being attacked online with their discriminatory behavior toward outgroups—appears to have slightly larger effects across multiple outcomes. Disapproval messages without a perspective shift produced smaller and non-significant estimates. These findings advance our theoretical understanding of how counterspeech works and provide actionable insights for how users can contribute to reducing intergroup hostility and its amplification online—especially at a time when many platforms are scaling back content moderation.