The term digital dehumanization might sound obscure. It surely sounds bad, and referring to the dark side of the internet makes it worse. But what do we mean by digital dehumanization, and what does the internet have to do with it?
The term dehumanization refers to the process of depriving a person or a group of persons the qualities of being human. Take a look at my article on zombies and dehumanization. I wrote back then:
The thoroughly disturbing aspect in all this is the concept of Dehumanization. If you’re interested, read Jonathan Glover’s Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century to see how it works. Basically, you convince a group of people – normal, everyday people like you and me – that another group of people are not really humans. Then, it becomes far easier to convince the first group to turn on the second. This is how the Holocaust happened, this is how Hiroshima happened, this is how My Lai, Bosnia, and Rwanda happened.
Let’s begin to unpack the process of digital dehumanization – a dehumanization process occurring digitally, on the internet – with a little hypothetical scenario. It will perhaps set up the tone for today’s article.
