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Denise Bostdorff is associate professor and chair of the communication department at The College of Wooster. She is an authority on political rhetoric, particularly that of presidents, vice presidents, and first ladies, as well as the language of policy reversal. A graduate of Bowling Green State University, Bostdorff earned her master's degree at The University of Illinois and her Ph.D. from Purdue University. She joined the Wooster faculty in 1994. Bostdorff is the author of The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis and several scholarly articles and book chapters about the rhetoric of the presidency as well as issue management. A member of the National Communication Association, the Central States Communication Association, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Bostdorff has several honors to her credit, including the National Speakers Association's Outstanding Communication Professor Award in 2000. |
According to a Chicago-based anti-racism group, Ohio has the largest concentration of white supremacist groups in the Midwest. Many of these groups are using the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to spread their message of hate and recruit new members in a variety of ways, including through the Internet. Denise Bostdorff, associate professor of communication at The College of Wooster, has studied this trend, which began about five years ago, and she offers some reasons as to why the Internet seems to serve these groups so well. Why have hate groups turned to the Internet to recruit new members? Former Klansman Don Black constructed the first Internet hate site in March 1995. By early this year, 366 U.S.-based hate sites existed on the World Wide Web. This development is especially significant given the increase in individuals' use of the Internet, which went from three million people worldwide in 1994 to more than 150 million users by 1998. As for why the Internet is so attractive to hate groups, one reason is that it allows them to reach a wide audience at very little expense, especially compared to old-fashioned methods like posters and brochures. How do these groups use the Internet for recruitment? Hate groups vary in their use of the web for recruitment. In general, the Internet can empower a racist by making it appear that thousands of others feel the same way that he or she does. Some web sites offer the opportunity to participate in chat rooms or to leave messages on electronic bulletin boards, means by which individual needs for social support may be met. Because virtual communities tend to be composed of like-minded people, participants in hate chat rooms and visitors to hate web sites are unlikely to encounter different points of view. This is a particularly troubling feature of the Internet, especially given how inflammatory hate group messages are. A number of sites also sell merchandise, such as the American Knights of the Klan's noose pins or Resistance Records' white power music, which serves to reinforce their messages. What is the target audience for such messages? The target audience also varies somewhat, depending upon the group. Klan groups have increasingly made efforts to reach out to women on the Web with specialized messages. Several hate groups also have Web pages designed for children, such as Stormfront's site, which is run by a hate leader's young son, and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's "Just for Kids" page, which includes cartoon drawings and primary colors, along with misleading information, such as the claim that the Klan's "long-range goal is peace on Earth." Still other groups, like White Aryan Resistance, tend to target young men in the hopes of inciting them to individual acts of violence or "lone wolf" behavior that the organization can, in turn, disavow. Hate groups on the Internet also target middle- and upper-income teens that have computers in their bedrooms, away from the overseeing eyes of parents. Do these Web sites pose any danger to the nation's youth? Yes, they do pose a danger when children and teens are left to roam the Web unsupervised. Children and teens frequently lack the experience and sophistication to recognize when they are being manipulated. Parents should carefully supervise their children's use of the Internet and think twice before placing a computer in a child's bedroom or other isolated place where other family members are unlikely to see the sites that the child is accessing. Screening devices can be useful, but parents and teachers may want to deal with teens in a more direct way by teaching them how to evaluate the credibility of Internet messages. Just as schools instruct students on how to evaluate the credibility and reasoning of books and periodicals, they should do the same with the Internet. You can't insulate teens forever, but neither should you leave them to navigate such issues on their own. What does the use of the Internet say about these hate groups? For some groups, using the Internet may just be a reflection of how society as a whole has turned to the Internet as another way to communicate. At the same time, the fact that the Internet enables hate groups to link with one another serves to reinforce their messages of hate. A visitor to one site will frequently be directed to other sites. This leads to a cross-fertilization of ideas and members. As one example, the Klan today targets a much broader range of social issues than it once did, and its members are actively involved in other, similar organizations, as well. The linkages among hate groups on the web also foster cooperation and enable them to work together on political issues, such as encouraging followers from various groups to vote for anti-affirmative action legislation, as hate groups in Washington state did. Is there a limit to what hate groups can espouse on the Internet? The same standards of free speech that apply to the press and to the political speech of other citizens also apply to the Internet. Just like speech in these other arenas, the issue of free speech on the Internet is a controversial one. On the one hand, free speech allows hate groups to spew their vicious messages to potential supporters. On the other hand, restricting speech on the Internet might have the effect of driving hate groups further underground so that we are unable to gain insights into their perspectives and concerns, however much we may disagree with them. The real way to deter hate speech is to tackle the problems that may lead individuals to be vulnerable to hate group messages in the first place. |
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| Last updated: January 10, 2006 · For more information, contact John Finn | ||
