social media
Number of victims of hate speech on social media has fallen
While the majority chats with friends and family on social media, others throw punches below the belt. photo
© Jens Kalaene/dpa
54 million people in Germany use social media. There is not only nice exchange. However, as the corona pandemic subsides, hate speech and fake news will decrease somewhat.
The number of Internet users in Germany who have themselves become victims of hate speech on social networks has fallen slightly. According to a representative survey by the digital association Bitkom, which was published on Tuesday, 12 percent of users have personally encountered hate speech online. In 2021, during the peak of the corona pandemic and the year of the federal elections, this value was 16 percent.
The numbers are also declining when it comes to the perception of fake news: Two years ago, nine out of ten social media users (92 percent) noticed fake news in social networks. At present, only two-thirds of all users notice obviously false news or reports. The most common topic (68 percent) is the corona pandemic, followed by the war in Ukraine (55 percent) and the topic of refugees and immigration (52 percent).
Fake news threat to democracy
“In addition to important and helpful information, incorrect, misleading and illegal content is unfortunately also spreading on a large scale via online platforms,” said Bitkom CEO Bernhard Rohleder. Fake news is a threat to democracy and social cohesion. “They undermine the credibility of our media and tempt to believe supposedly simple answers to complex questions.”
Despite the shortcomings, young people in particular mostly rely on information from social media. 55 percent of users between the ages of 16 and 29 say that without social networks they often wouldn’t know what’s happening in the world, 58 percent of the U30 generation think they couldn’t imagine life without social networks.
Among the providers of social networks, the Facebook group Meta holds the two leading positions. 68 percent of the 60 million Internet users in Germany have used Facebook in the past twelve months, 54 percent Instagram. In third place is the Pinterest network (38 percent), which is particularly popular with women. This is followed by Tiktok (30 percent), Twitter (27 percent) and the two career networks LinkedIn (25 percent) and Xing (24 percent). The open Twitter alternative Mastodon has not yet been able to establish itself in the masses and, with 4 percent usage, is on a par with the Russian network VK (5 percent) and its Chinese counterpart Weibo (4 percent).