The uninhibited expression of negativity and antisocial sentiment began early on the internet and is getting worse.
As early as 1984, psychologist Sara Kiesler of Carnegie Mellon University and her colleagues recognized that computer-mediated communication lacked cues to regulate normal interaction. i By 1990, Spears, Lea, and Lee had shown the extremitization of opinions in computer-mediated discourse. ii These studies, however, were done with locally networked computers, not those separated by half a planet, as eventually became commonplace.
By 2014, the Pew Research Center reported that over 70% of ...
