| Chapter 2: | Background |
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In the year preceding the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 there was only one reported U.S.-based hate site, a Web site posted by former Klansman Don Black (Bostdorff, 2004; Southern Poverty Law Center, 1999). However, the year after the Reno decision the number of U.S.-based hate sites had escalated to 254 (Breckheimer, 2002; Southern Poverty Law Center). By the turn of the century, the number was over 400 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2003). Some groups began calling for government officials to take steps to ban Internet hate sites. Not surprisingly, legal scholars also began participating in the hate site debate.
However, as would be expected, legal scholars examining the issue of hate sites were primarily focused on reviewing the relevant legal issues, not the actual content of these sites. Thus, the job of examining hate site content was left primarily up to communication scholars, those persons trained to analyze the content of human communications, both mediated and unmediated. Surprisingly, although communication scholars have examined the hate speech issue generally since the Internet went commercial in 1990, few articles appear in the published communication literature that deal specifically with online hate speech, and even less involve analyses of hate site content.
Literature Review
Apple and Messner (2001) were among the first communication scholars to examine hate site content. The researchers analyzed the online rhetoric contained on six Web sites posted by adherents of Christian Identity, a movement that claims that whites are the superior racial group and will ultimately triumph over all other “inferior” and “evil” races in an impending race war. The researchers’ rhetorical analysis demonstrated that paranoia and paradox are the essential elements of the apocalyptic rhetoric found on Christian Identity Web sites. Based on their findings, Apple and Messner concluded that “[m]ainstream America’s vulnerability to hate rhetoric…may be enhanced by its dissemination via the Internet” (p. 224).