Group Assignment |~Question 3~|

The Internet is a place where hate groups come to inhabit. 

Discuss with relevant examples.

      Hate group, if defining word by word, hate is defined as “to loathe, or detest, while group is defined as “a number of persons or things gathered, located, or classified together”. Therefore, a hate group is two or more people who in an organization, club, religion or so forth, whose purpose is to promote some agenda of what they hate or against. They can advocates and practice hate, hostility, or violence among the members towards a race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation or other designated sector of the society.

       Hate group started to inhabit in the internet since the development of the social networking sites. A study showed that there was only one hate website in the internet in 1995, but there are nearly 10,000 hate websites emerge nowadays! The internet has become a popular place for the hate group to inhabit, especially in the social networking sites. Internet has provided a very good platform and become a tool for the hate group to disseminate their agenda. Why is this happening?

       Firstly, internet is open to each of us. We can click and browse any website within a second, and there is no any obligation and rules that tell us cannot visit certain websites, because it is our freedom to use the internet. Hate group can easily post any information and advocate their own agenda to the whole world by just sitting down in front of the computer. Therefore, the members of the hate group can get updated all the time from the leader of the hate group. Internet certainly provides a platform for them to share within the group. For example, the hate group can easily create their own websites to spread the agenda. They just need a short moment to complete that.

       In facts, the internet has a wide coverage. This made the hate group easier to recruit the new members. They can recruit the hate group members in everywhere by just having the internet, as the internet has link the world together. Therefore, they can become stronger and stronger as the member increasing. Study found that there are more than 11,500 terrorist and racist websites, blogs, chat rooms and social networking pages using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube online for expressing their propaganda. Nowadays in Facebook also can easily create a group and can ask people for joining easily without any problem. They can exchange their information and get the information from all over the world. Internet can reach in a mass audience in facts.

       Besides, the responsible that exist in the virtual world also become lesser, as no one will know who you are actually in the real world. Therefore, the hate group can spread whatever they want in the internet and in the social networking sites. It is hard to track you in the virtual world as there are no evidence through the internet. The hate group can use a fake identity to disseminate the agenda without anybody knowing it. The freedom on the internet is more than the real world, this is why hate group start to inhabit actively in the internet.

       To conclude this, we must always be aware and alert while visiting any websites in the internet. With this, only we can identify who are the hate group and think critically before we start to express our opinion.