Online ‘likes’ for toxic social media posts prompt more − and more hateful − messages

RSM Visiting Scholar Joseph Walther explains the social approval theory of online hate: that posters of hateful messages are motivated by the approval of like-minded individuals.

"When you look at online hate messages, you start to notice clues that suggest, more often than not, that hatemongers are posting messages to each other, not to those their messages implicate and denigrate."

Read more in The Conversation.