Hate Propaganda In Cyberspace: Censorship, Freedom Of Speech, And Critical Surfing

The purpose of this paper is to address a number of issues regarding ever-growing hate propaganda in cyberspace. First, I discuss why and how the Internet has become the propaganda venue of hate groups. Second, I discuss how the Internet has facilitated a major shift in the demographics of the target audience for hate groups. Third, I discuss how practical or impractical an option of censorship is in regulating cyberspace. Finally, I discuss what necessary tools educators and parents can provide children to discern good information from bad information so that they are able to make intelligent and informed decisions about cultural tolerance and intolerance. I argue that as we teach our children to recognize and deal with social evils in the real world, we should teach them to do the same in cyberspace.

The development of cyberspace has fundamentally changed the way in which society communicates. The availability of the Internet – a backbone connecting millions of computers all over the world and millions of individual subscribers – has created the information superhighway unbounded by any physical and non-physical ba

There are several of reasons why the Internet has become the popular propaganda venue of hate groups. First, the Internet is a global medium, a device that can reach millions of people who would never have been reached otherwise. Before the Internet, hate groups relied upon poorly produced newsletters, flyers, and even graffiti to spread their messages, and they had to search for people to deliver their messages. The advent of the Internet has changed everything. That is, as much as the Internet provides us with extraordinary possibilities for telecommunication, it does also serve hate groups as an ideal tool for spreading hate. Second, communication in cyberspace is relatively inexpensive (Preston, 1999). With computers becoming cheaper and the access to the Internet becoming more widespread, more and more people are potentially exposed to the growing mass of hatred in cyberspace. Third, the Internet is the most free press imaginable (Borrowman, 1999). As Katz (1998) points out, virtually any kind of misinformation can be posted, circulated, and exchanged in cyberspace. At least in the U.S., the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech regardless of its appropriateness. Fourth, all Internet users are essentially potential publishers. With the availability of user-friendly web authoring tools, it is relatively easy to set up a web site.

We have seen a number of attempts to impose some regulations on otherwise unregulated cyberspace. The most notable one has been the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which protects children by prohibiting inappropriate messages and images from being sent through cyberspace and empowers the Federal Communications Commission to control indecent materials in cyberspace. The CDA, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 was ruled as an unacceptable infringement on the First Amendment and thereby unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was a victory for civil libertarians who believe the harmful effects of hate messages are not deemed to be sufficiently ominous to justify the imposition of restrictions on freedom of speech (Kallen, 1998). With or without the CDA, regulating online hatred presents enormous difficulties. Most importantly, the global nature of the Internet makes any legal regulation virtually impossible. That is, even with some sort of rules, they can apply only within the U.S. because the Internet is international.

Many authors perceive that the threat is real (Karl, 1997; Dean, 1999; Sharpe, 1999; Preston, 1999). Hate sites are multiplying at an alarming rate in cyberspace. The Justice Department reported more than 8,000 hate crimes in 1997, and more than half of such crimes were racially motivated (Karl, 1997). Not only hate group web sites are on the rise, but also are the number of hate groups in the United States. Civil rights groups claim that hate is "polluting" or "poisoni

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