  Current research mainly explores the attributes and impact of online
counterspeech, leaving a gap in understanding of who engages in online
counterspeech or what motivates or deters users from participating. To
investigate this, we surveyed 458 English-speaking U.S. participants, analyzing
key motivations and barriers underlying online counterspeech engagement. We
presented each participant with three hate speech examples from a set of 900,
spanning race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability, and
requested counterspeech responses. Subsequent questions assessed their
satisfaction, perceived difficulty, and the effectiveness of their
counterspeech. Our findings show that having been a target of online hate is a
key driver of frequent online counterspeech engagement. People differ in their
motivations and barriers towards engaging in online counterspeech across
different demographic groups. Younger individuals, women, those with higher
education levels, and regular witnesses to online hate are more reluctant to
engage in online counterspeech due to concerns around public exposure,
retaliation, and third-party harassment. Varying motivation and barriers in
counterspeech engagement also shape how individuals view their own
self-authored counterspeech and the difficulty experienced writing it.
Additionally, our work explores people's willingness to use AI technologies
like ChatGPT for counterspeech writing. Through this work we introduce a
multi-item scale for understanding counterspeech motivation and barriers and a
more nuanced understanding of the factors shaping online counterspeech
engagement.
