Defending Others Online: The Influence of Observing Formal and Informal Social Control on One's Willingness to Defend Cyberhate Victims.

This paper examines factors correlated with online self-help-an informal form of social control vis-à-vis intervention-upon witnessing a cyberhate attack. Using online surveys from 18- to 26-year-old respondents in the United States, we explore the roles of various types of online and offline formal and informal social control mechanisms on the enactment of self-help through the use of descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression. The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that online collective efficacy is positively related to self-help, as is having close ties to individuals and groups offline and online.