Joe Walther’s current research examines how social interactions among online hate posters increase its perpetration.
He holds the Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Communication. At BKC, he was a Rebooting Social Media participant in 2023-2024, and a Faculty Associate each year since. His research focuses on the impact of interpersonal and intergroup dynamics in the attitudes and behaviors people develop via online interaction, in relationships, groups, and intergroup conflict. He developed the social information processing theory of mediated communication, the hyperpersonal model of online communication (by which people experience exceptionally intense emotions and connections), and warranting theory, among others. His new research on online hate examines the social motivations and gratifications that informally-organized participants enjoy in the collaborative production and propagation of racism and other forms of antagonism. That work has generated a new theory and several empirical investigations. He is the former Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association, who has held positions at several universities in the US, Europe, and Asia. He is also working with the California Department of Civil Rights Commission on the State of Hate.
