Amplification

The most common response to harmful or hateful content online - as to anything else offensive or objectionable - is to try to get rid of it. Some counterspeakers choose to do just the opposite, though - drawing more attention to content they find repulsive, by spreading it widely or by literally making it larger or more visible. We call this “amplification.”  

It often comes down to taking an exchange that happened between a small number of people and posting it where more people can see it. This might seem counterintuitive: why would counterspeakers create a larger platform for harmful or offensive speech when they are trying to reduce such content? They have reasons, though.

First, drawing the attention of a larger audience to a particular piece of speech can serve as an educational tool, a way of making people realize what terrible content circulates - for example, showing men the sorts of harassment that women face online. Second, amplification can stimulate more counterspeech, by exposing people to content they disagree with, or even revile. 

The Brazilian campaign Mirrors of Racism is an example of literal amplification. In 2015, when the journalist Maria Julia Coutinho (known by her nickname Maju) became the first Black weather broadcaster for a prime-time news show, Jornal Nacional, some Brazilians reacted with a torrent of racism against her and other Black Brazilians. 

In response, Criola, a Black women’s civil rights organization in Brazil, partnered with the advertising firm W3haus to create an anti-racism campaign. They collected some vivid, crude racist comments, suggesting that Black people smell bad for example, and posted them in huge letters on billboards in five Brazilian cities, in the neighborhoods of the people who had posted the comments online. Each billboard also bore the phrase “Racismo virtual, consecuencias reales” (“Virtual racism, real consequences”).

Another counterspeech campaign that used amplification is #MoreThanMean. In 2016, the hosts of the podcast “Just Not Sports,” decided to try an innovative method to diminish the sort of harassment and contempt that women sports journalists frequently receive. ESPN’s Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro – two such journalists – agreed to help make a video to amplify the problem. With the video, Brad Burke, one of the co-creators of #MoreThanMean, hoped to shock the silent crowd of male sports fans into changing their behavior (by stopping harassing women or by speaking up when they see other men doing it).  

He invited a small group of men to take part in the project, only telling them that they would be reading mean tweets sent to two Chicago sports reporters. When they arrived, they were each seated across from Spain or DiCaro and given an iPad that would show one tweet at a time.  

In the video, the men – each sitting facing either Spain or DiCaro and looking them in the eye as Burke had instructed - struggle to read actual messages that the women had received from readers, such as “You need to be hit in the head with a hockey puck and killed,” and “I hope you get raped again.” The 3-minute video ends with the words “We wouldn’t say it to their faces. So let’s not type it.” 

The video shows other men the abuse and harassment that women sports journalists have to endure. But it is the reactions of the men, clearly shocked and embarrassed, that does the work of maintaining the discourse norm against such speech.