Edited and reviewed by: Rosanna E. Guadagno, University of Oulu, Finland
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The value of digital platforms cannot be ignored. With their integrated nature, digital platforms remove boundaries in the digital economy and have become the operating system of our lives (Vaidhyanathan,
Though the use of digital platforms has both sides of the coin, research on psychological understanding of malicious behaviors on digital platforms is still limited. Previous studies appear to focus mainly on the positive side of the coin. Therefore, this Research Topic solicited empirical articles examining the antecedents, processes, and effects of malicious behaviors on digital platforms. This editorial piece aims to provide a quick review of the four articles published under this Research Topic, followed by concluding remarks.
The four articles take a deep dive into three prevalent forms of malicious behaviors on digital platforms: malicious comments, hate speech, and cyberbullying. First, focusing on malicious news comments,
Second, two studies tackle hate speech, both its expression patterns in the context of gerontophobia and the public's attitudes toward its regulation.
Lastly,
In summary, the articles provide timely findings and point to the importance of understanding psychological characteristics of malicious behaviors on digital platforms. They advance our understanding of malicious behaviors on digital platforms by showcasing their patterns, causes and effects and delving into mechanisms behind individuals' perceptions of maliciousness as well as support for regulation. Insights gained from this Research Topic could help us better understand the related studies conducted in Asian and Middle Eastern contexts. We hope that this Research Topic will inspire further in-depth research on how to mitigate the serious problems of malicious comments, hate speech and digital bullying on digital platforms.
SK: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. DK: Validation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. CN: Validation, Writing—review & editing. AP: Validation, Writing—review & editing.
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2023S1A5C2A03095169). This research was also supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2024-2020-0-01749) supervised by the IITP (Institute of Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation). Finally, this research was supported by the School of Media and Communication at Korea University (K2327101).
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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