The Utility of Community Resilience Models for the Prevention of Online Violence

Abstract

Online violence is a complex issue transcending national borders with digital and real-world consequences. It is a consequence of hate, fueled by real and perceived injustices. Communities must be able to adapt - improving citizens’ social and material conditions to prevent hate from taking root or spreading. Community resilience research focuses on assessing a community’s ability to adapt and how well it copes with disruptions both known and unknown. Therefore, community resilience models and methods should be adopted by those working to prevent online violence both to investigate new means of preventing hate speech and to test existing community resilience theory in a new context. This paper will review online violence and community resilience, explain their connection, review community resilience models that may be of interest for violence prevention work, and describe how those models are being used in a project that is currently in progress.