The Significance of Online Platforms on Hate Crime: A Research Report

This report investigates hate crime within the context of the criminal justice system, focusing on the influence of online platforms on the nature and prevalence of such crimes. The research explores the impact of hate crimes on gender and age, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including literature reviews and interviews. The report examines the role of social media in facilitating hate crimes, with a particular emphasis on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The study employs Pearson correlation to analyze the relationship between age and online post frequency. Findings reveal that online platforms are significant contributors to hate crime, often targeting individuals based on their gender or age, with females and older individuals being disproportionately affected. The report also includes detailed analysis of the research methodology and results, highlighting the significance of these findings within the broader context of criminal justice and societal safety.

Research methods for
Crime and Criminal
Justice

Table of Contents
TITLE..............................................................................................................................................4
Research aims and objectives.................................................................................................4
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................6
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................6
Literature review....................................................................................................................6
Method of research.................................................................................................................8
Results....................................................................................................................................9
Discussion.............................................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13
APPENDICE..................................................................................................................................15

TITLE
To determine the significance of online platform on hate crime and its impact on gender and
age.
Research aims and objectives.
Research aim:
To determine the significance of online platform on hate crime and its impact on gender
and age.
Research objectives:
 To understand the concept of hate crime as an offence in UK.
 To identify the impact of hate crime on gender.
 To determine the impact of hate crime on age. To examine the significance of online platform in committing hate crime.
Research Hypothesis:
H0: There is a significant difference between frequency of online post and nature of
online hate crime.
HA: There is a no significant difference between frequency of online post and nature of
online hate crime.
ABSTRACT
This report covers the research on the criminal justice system and crime and specifically the
offence of hate crime. This offence is describing as the crime which is committed against the
people with the motive of biasness and mainly consists of the offence such as harassment,
bullying, physical assault, damage to property and many other. Primary and secondary both data
collection method is used for gathering the qualitative and quantitative data. As per the research
conducted, interview is being used to collect the primary collect and literature review is used for
gathering the secondary data. As per the analysis of qualitative research, it can be said that the
online platform and mainly the twitter and Facebook is used for committing the offence of hate
crime and this offence is mainly collected on the basis of age and gender. Females are the main

victim of this crime and the older people, on the basis of age are main victim of crime.

INTRODUCTION
Crime is referred to as the act which is committed in order to harm, violate or endanger
the rights of individual or the entire community (Jennings and Reingle, 2019). It is mainly
carried out by the person or a group, either unintentionally or deliberately and is also punishable
under the law. The criminal justice system is the combination of the legal processes and courts
which deals with the criminal activities whereby they render justice to the victim and punishes
the wrongdoer. It can be said that criminal justice is mainly the delivery of justice to those who
has committed the crime. Hate crime is prejudice motivated crime that occurs when the
perpetrator mainly targets the victim because of its membership with certain racial demographic
or the social group. It is the criminal act which involves the incidents such as damage to
property, physical assault, verbal abuse, harassment, bullying. Insult and many other. This report
is the research based on crime and criminal justice system. It covers the literature review,
methods of research, its result and discussion.
MAIN BODY
Literature review.
1. To understand the concept of hate crime as an offence in UK.
According to Dr Farhan Samanani and Sylvie Pope, 2021, Hate crime is the concept of
criminology which refers to the group of crimes which is not the particular crime but includes
many forms of offences from damaging property to killing the people. The different elements
of the hate crime include the following-
It is an act which constitutes the crime under the ordinary law of crime. It may include the
offence against the property or person or public peace and includes assault, manslaughter,
damage to the property, harassment, etc. The gravity of this offence is very much irrelevant as it
may take form of serious or petty offence (Maxfield and Babbie, 2017). The act of hate crime is
committed with the particular motive which is also called biasness. This element distinguishes
between the hate crime and other ordinary offences. The motive which is bias is prejudice to
perpetrator towards the victim or premises. The target may be selected due to the perceived or
re-connection, affiliation, attachment, membership or support with the protected group which
includes national, race or ethnic origin, colour, sex, race and other protected characteristics.

2.To identify the impact of hate crime on gender.
According to Edward Dunbar, 2020, the hate crime which is based on the gender
constitutes the criminal offence which is motivated by the bias against the gender of person.
These crimes mainly target the property, person or the association which is connected with the
group or people because of their perceived or actual gender. One of the factor which is
motivating in this type of crime is perception of perpetrator regarding gender norms. The victim
of this crime is targeted often because of their deviation from the gender norm which includes
on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.
The hate crime on the basis of gender can target the people or the property because of
their professional affiliation, association or the activism on the gender issue like civil society
organisation and women rights group who works with victim of such violence (Roberts, 2018).
There can be victim of hate crime on the basis of gender, however, the hate crime on
gender based affects disproportionately the girls and women as these victims are selected on the
basis of their gender or multiple identity traits like religion and gender. It is important to
consider the perpetrator as the gender bias during an incident so that the offence of hate crime is
considered (Bosworth, Parmar and Vázquez, 2018).
3. To determine the impact of hate crime on age.
According to Emma Batha, 2021, in order to understand nature of hate crime, it is
important to know the type of person who have committed such crime, Gender, age and ethnic
background are such important factors which helps in understanding the type of people who
have committed the hate crime. If the crime is committed which is prejudice to the older people
and results in the discrimination, it is against the Equality Act. The crime which is committed
against the older people are in context to mistreatment and abuse which can be emotional,
sexual, physical or financial (Quilter, McNamara and Steer, 2018)
4. To examine the significance of online platform in committing hate crime.
As per the opinion of Prashant Mara and Vikram Jeet Singh, 2020, there has been a
great number of hate crime in the significant years because of growing presence of internet in
private, social and professional lives, the use of social media has led to the increase in number
of ways in which the cyber hate is perpetrated. The different forms of cyber hate which includes
the hate crime. Online platform has been a great place for committing the hate crime as
perpetrator is free to commit any kind of hate crime from any place and at any time (Kappeler

and Potter, 2017). There is a bias motivation in committing the hate crime on online platform.
This gives the accused the power to commit crime at any place and at any time and against any
number of people in one go.
Method of research.
Research methodology is referred to as the process which involves specific technique or
procedure which is used to select, identify, analyse and process the information about the topic.
There are methodologies which includes the following- Qualitative- This involves analysing and collecting the non-numerical data in order to
understand the opinion, concept or experiences. It may be used to collect or gather the
deep insight of the problem or the new idea for the research. This research is mainly
used to understand as to how people mainly experience the world and some approaches
of this research are ten to be focused and flexible on retaining the rich meaning when
data is being interpreted (Cunneen and Tauri, 2019).
 Quantitative- This research involves collected the data which is in the numerical form
and which can be expressed I n graph and numbers. It is mainly used to confirm and test
the assumptions and theories. It is also used to generalised the facts regarding the topic.
In context to present research, both quantitative and qualitative research shall be adopted
in order to gather the reliable and valid data for the valid outcome.
Data collection
It is the process of gathering and collecting the information on the variable of the
interest in the established and systematic manner so that one can enable to answer the research
questions and test the hypothesis in order to evaluate the outcome (Braswell, McCarthy and
McCarthy, 2017). Types of data collection includes the following- Primary- This type of research involves the collection of first-hand information which is
directed collected and gathered by the researcher (Goshin, Colbert and Carey, 2018). It
takes time and cost of the researcher as there is original data being collected by the
researcher in order to bring reliable data for testing the hypothesis and bringing the valid
outcome. Example of primary data includes the questionnaire, interview, etc.

 Secondary- It involves collecting the existing data which is already collected by the
other person. It takes less time and cost for gathering this data. The existing data is
summarised in order to increase overall effectiveness of the research. Example of
secondary research includes the websites, books, journals, public libraries, etc. (Walsh,
2021)
In the present research, both primary and secondary research is being used, where
interview is being used as primary data collection and literature review is being used for
secondary data collection.
Results.
Quantitative research result
Correlation
It is a statistic measure which measures the degree of two variables move in relation to each
other. It means change in one variable results in similar or opposite change in other variable. In
statistics there are four types of correlation which are as follows -
 Pearson Correlation
 Kendall Correlation
 Spearman Correlation
 Point-Biserial Correlation
In the above test we used Pearson Correlation. It measures linear correlation between two data
sets. Its value lies between -1 to +1.
Procedure of Pearson Correlation in SPSS -
Analyse > Correlate > Bivariate > Select Variables > Click OK.
H0: Does age matter in the context of making online post.
H1: Does age do not matter in the context of making online post.
The below mentioned table show the significance difference with the help Pearson correlation
of between the age and the frequency of online test.
Correlations
Frequency of
online posts
Age

Frequency of online
posts
Pearson
Correlation 1 .340*
Sig. (2-tailed) .016
N 50 50
Age
Pearson
Correlation .340* 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .016
N 50 50
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
From the above table it has been determined that the significance difference between two
variables which is age and the frequency of online test is 0.16. In research, the Pearson
correlation is perhaps the most widely used. This metric assesses the intensity and trajectory of
a two-variable positive correlation. Shareholders may also use partnership was formed to see
whether the relation between different recognize changes. This shows a positive perfect
correlation which support the hypothesis that age really matter in context of making post on
different online platform (Wibowo, 2018). To measure the Pearson product-moment
connection, the variable of both the 2 factors should first be determined. The standard deviation
of each variable must then be calculated. The Pearson correlation is calculated by multiplying
the standard deviation even by average of the mean difference of a 2 factors (Moriarty, 2017).
Qualitative research result
In order to collect the qualitative data, interview is being used. The participants used for
interview includes the staff of college and school and police officers. The interpretation of
qualitative research is narrated below-
THEME 1: what is the role of social media in hate crime?
Interpretation:
As per the interview conducted on 5 participants, the school and college staff are of the
view that the social media is the platform, which have seen more incidents of the harassment,
bullying and the hateful post. They are of the view that the post on social media relates mainly
to the race and religion. On other hand, the police officers are of the view that they do not
understand the platform which are being used for committing the hate crime (Pakes, 2019).

THEME 2: What is the main ground of committing the hate crime?
Interpretation:
On the basis of interview conducted, both school or college staff are of the view that the
hate crime is mainly committed on the basis of religion but the police officer is of the opinion
that that this offence is committed on the basis of race and religion both.
THEME 3 According to you, who is the main accused of committing the hate crime?
Interpretation:
As per the interview conducted, both school staff and police officer are of the view that
the hate crime is committed mainly by the students on the online platform such as twitter and
Facebook.
THEME 4: Who are the main victim of hate crime on the basis of gender and age?
Interpretation:
On the basis of interview conducted, the females and the older people are main victims
of the offence of hate crime as per record. The main reason is easy target of female and old age
people as everyone wants to make them feel weak.
Discussion.
As per the qualitative and quantitative data analysis, it can be observed that the age and
frequency of people in making online post have a significant positive value (Pezzella, Fetzer
and Keller, 2019). This actually define that if people of older age do not use internet for posting
any content as they are more interested in obtaining information which is useful for them. To
obtain perspective, quantitative data collection approaches generally rely on closed-ended
questions. The selection of research participants must be wide enough, with values attached to
ensuring adequate participant representation. Different techniques and methods have benefits
and disadvantages, but seasoned administrators understand how to handle each methodology for
the best results. Since the sample size is very small, it's important to make changes to prevent
bias, otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of raw data but very few has use. On the other side,
information obtained from qualitative analysis five-person interview, college and university
staff media marketing is the platform where more cases of abuse, intimidation, and hateful posts

have occurred. They argue that the following media posts are mostly about religion and race.
The police officers, but at the other side, believe that they really do not recognize the system
(Levin and Reitzel, 2018).

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that the crime is an act of breaking the law which is
punishable and is committed with an intention to harm and endanger the people. Hate crime is
one such offence which is committed with an intention of biasness against the particular group
which is based on race, religion, etc. This report consists of the research where quantitative and
qualitative research is being used and primary and secondary data collection is used for bringing
the result of the research. Interview is used for qualitative data analysis and data statistics is
used for quantitative analysis using the SPSS. At last it is concluded that the offence of hate
crime is committed mainly on online platform and impact people on the basis of age and
gender.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bosworth, M., Parmar, A. and Vázquez, Y. eds., 2018. Race, criminal justice, and migration
control: Enforcing the boundaries of belonging. Oxford University Press.
Braswell, M.C., McCarthy, B.R. and McCarthy, B.J., 2017. Justice, crime, and ethics. Taylor &
Francis.
Cunneen, C. and Tauri, J.M., 2019. Indigenous peoples, criminology, and criminal justice.
Annual Review of Criminology. 2. pp.359-381.
Goshin, L.S., Colbert, A.M. and Carey, J.F., 2018. An integrative review of nurse-authored
research to improve health equity and human rights for criminal-justice-involved
people. Journal of forensic nursing. 14(2). pp.53-60.
Jennings, W.G. and Reingle, J.M., 2019. Criminological and criminal justice research methods.
Aspen Publishers.
Kappeler, V.E. and Potter, G.W., 2017. The mythology of crime and criminal justice. Waveland
Press.
Levin, B. and Reitzel, J.D., 2018. Report to the nation: hate crimes rise in US cities and counties
in time of division and foreign interference.
Maxfield, M.G. and Babbie, E.R., 2017. Research methods for criminal justice and criminology.
Cengage Learning.
Moriarty, L.J., 2017. Criminal justice technology in the 21st century. Charles C Thomas
Publisher.
Pakes, F., 2019. Comparative criminal justice. Routledge.
Pezzella, F.S., Fetzer, M.D. and Keller, T., 2019. The dark figure of hate crime underreporting.
American Behavioral Scientist, p.0002764218823844.

Pezzella, Fetzer and Keller, 2019 Levin and Reitzel, 2018
Quilter, J., McNamara, L. and Steer, K., 2018. The significance of'intoxication'in Australian
criminal law. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice [electronic resource],
(546), pp.1-16.
Roberts, J., 2018. Public opinion, crime, and criminal justice. Routledge.
Walsh, T.G., 2021. Spirituality, Crime Prevention, and Criminal Justice: The Ongoing
Significance of Faith-Based Organizations to the Work of the United Nations. In Crime
Prevention and Justice in 2030 (pp. 691-701). Springer, Cham.
Wibowo, M.H., 2018. Corporate Responsibility in Money Laundering Crime (Perspective
Criminal Law Policy in Crime of Corruption in Indonesia). JILS, 3, p.213.

APPENDICE
Correlations
Frequency of
online posts
Age
Frequency of online
posts
Pearson
Correlation 1 .340*
Sig. (2-tailed) .016
N 50 50
Age
Pearson
Correlation .340* 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .016
N 50 50
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).