Digital Content Regulations: A Select Study in Indian Context

Hate contents are the digital data that is harmful due to its inciting nature towards the
protected characteristics. In the Indian context, the need for researches on social media
and citizens' e-participation with a focus on hate content reduction is often reported.
This is because society and nations get affected by the hate content generation and
propagation. Hate content at the workplace affects both the mental and physical health
of the victims (employees), productivity, and financial status of the organization.
Therefore, this research tries to address issues around online hate content with the
objectives to (a) understand the nature and forms of digital hate content in the Indian
context, (b) understand the influence of digital hate content in online safety, (c)
understand policies and regulations addressing digital hate content, and (d) suggest
recommendations for improving digital hate content regulation in India.
Two different quantitative studies are conducted to understand the ecosystem of online
hate content and the role of organizations in hate content mitigation. Survey data is
collected through both online and offline modes from appropriate respondents. The data
is analyzed for respondents’ views about the nature of online hate content and its
mitigation separately. The results indicate that alienated, inclination, and personal
experience contribute to gender hate content, which in turn contribute to online hate
content. The religious hate content contributes to online hate content with the support
from the stance of superiority, ignorance, religionizing the nation, and the clothing style
contributing variables. The inherited nature, peer pressure, stereotype, unfamiliarity of
ethnicity, personal experience, skin color, and poverty contributes to racist hate content,
which in turn lead to online hate content. Similarly, disability hate content contributes
to online hate content with the support of ignorance, envious, the fright of health, and
able-bodied contributing variables. The analysis results towards the mitigation of hate
content reveal the role of government and non-government authorities for digital hate
content reduction. The non-governmental communities- civil societies, private sectors,
and intermediaries are more important to reduce digital hate content.
Multiple case studies are conducted using social media data. The case study on related
incidents of race, gender, religion, and disability indicated the existence of racism,
gender hate, religious hate, and disability hate content. Another case study on an
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ideological incident reported that the terrorist act is one of the causes of online hate
content.
This thesis contributes to the development of a mixed-method design involving the
quantitative data (questionnaire survey) and qualitative data (Twitter data) to answer a
research question “How to improve digital hate content regulations in the Indian
context?”. The identification of race, gender, religion, and disability as the drivers of
online hate content contributes to theory.