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Bystanders' victim blaming and minimizing consequences of weight-based cyberhate attacks: The roles of anti-fat attitudes, body-positive online content, and gender

Marie Bedrosova, Masaryk University; Nikol Kvardova, Masaryk University; Hana Machakova, Masaryk University

Cyberhate refers to hateful expressions that attack group identities and that are motivated by an intergroup bias. It can be politically motivated or target minorities. However, physical appearance, and weight specifically, are common reasons for cyberhate attacks among adolescents. Using a between-subject experimental design, this study focuses on the bystanders of such attacks on Instagram. We investigate bystanders' assessments in the form of two moral disengagement mechanisms ‐ victim blaming and minimizing consequences ‐ and we compare the assessments of attacks that are diversified by the victim's weight (i.e., a victim who is plus-size and a victim who is thinner). We also examine the moderating roles of bystanders' prejudice against people who are plus-size in the form of so-called anti-fat attitudes, their frequency of viewing body-positive online content, and gender. The study's data come from an online survey conducted in 2020 with a representative sample of 658 Czech adolescents aged 13-18. We tested our hypotheses with structural equation modelling. The results show that the two moral disengagement mechanisms work differently. The victim's displayed weight affected the bystanders' tendency to victim blame: adolescents blamed the victim who is plus-size more than the victim who is thinner, but the victim's weight made no difference in minimizing the consequences of the incident. A moderating effect of anti-fat attitudes and gender was found for victim blaming. Bystanders with higher anti-fat attitudes and boys blamed the plus-size victim more than the thinner victim. On the other hand, there was no moderating effect for the frequency of viewing body-positive online content for either of the moral disengagement mechanisms. The results are discussed with regard to the differences between the two mechanisms, how they can inform follow-up cyberhate research and the practical implications for youth education and prevention programs.

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