There is a moment, in the great news stories, in which the event ceases to belong only to those who experience it and becomes everyone’s. It happens fast, often too fast. And it is precisely there that online hatred finds space, expands and becomes normalized.
It also happened in the case of Claudius Charlemagne’s parents. After the femicide of their daughter-in-law and the arrest of their son, their life was sucked into a ferocious, continuous, without pause public narrative. Even before the tragedy ended, another story had already started on social media: that of collective judgement.
When online hate stops being an outlet and becomes an environment
On social media, indignation flows quickly, often faster than thought. One comment leads to another, a sentence becomes a chorus. You don’t need to know people, you just need to know “which side they’re on”. In this climate, the parents of the man accused of the crime were no longer seen as individuals, but as an extension of the perpetrator.
Criminologist Roberta Bruzzone spoke openly about digital lynching. Not as a strong metaphor, but as a description of a precise mechanism: individual responsibility that slips, almost without realizing it, into shared guilt. A guilt that cannot be discussed, cannot be measured, cannot be exhausted.
Online hate works like this: it doesn’t ask for justice, it asks for belonging. Saying something harsh helps demonstrate that you’re on the right side. The problem is that, while we do it, someone on the other side experiences it as constant pressure, day and night.
When even newspapers become part of the pressure
In the letter left to the family, as reported by various national newspapers, the parents of Claudio Carlomagno also referred to the media pillory experienced in the days following their son’s arrest. Not only the pain of what happened, but the feeling of having ended up inside a story bigger than themselves, observed, commented on, analyzed relentlessly.
Here an uncomfortable but necessary theme comes into play: journalistic obstinacy. Not the one who informs, but the one who insists. Which repeats the same details, multiplies titles, seeks new angles even when they don’t add understanding. In these cases the news stops being a story of the facts and becomes a constant, invasive presence, difficult to ignore.
For those directly involved, this ongoing exposure is not abstract. It is the perception of no longer having a private space, of not being able to experience pain away from anyone’s eyes. When media attention is added to online hatred, the result is pressure that gives no respite, especially to those who are already emotionally fragile.
What happens in the head of those who are already overwhelmed by pain
Here psychology comes into play, the concrete, everyday one. Let’s imagine what it means to discover that a child has killed. It is a shock that breaks the very idea of family, of past, of future. Guilt, shame and disbelief overlap inside. Outside, meanwhile, the world watches and comments.
Online hate comes when the person is already fragile, disoriented, emotionally naked. And it is precisely on this point that science helps us better understand what happens.
A study published in 2025 on Scientific Reportsa journal from the Nature Group, shows that frequent exposure to online hate speech is associated with increased post-traumatic stress symptoms. We are not talking about simple annoyance, but about insomnia, hyperalertness, thoughts that return without asking permission, difficulty functioning in everyday life.
The most interesting, and perhaps most disturbing, fact is that these effects are strongest in people who are already experiencing trauma. Online hatred, in these cases, is not the cause of everything. It’s something more subtle: an amplifier.
Because digital hatred hurts more than we imagine
Another scientific review, published on PubMed Central, helps to focus on an often underestimated aspect. Online hostility is striking because it leaves no escape routes. There is no gate to close, no place to truly take refuge. Even turning off the phone is not enough, because the feeling remains that outside, somewhere, the judgment continues.
According to this research, exposure to hostile and dehumanizing comments is linked to depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and a sense of helplessness. Not so much because the words are “badder”, but because they are public, repeated, uncontrollable. It’s the idea of being watched and condemned without appeal that slowly wears away.
In this sense, online hate is not just communication. It’s an emotional environment. And like all environments, it can become toxic.
The Charlemagne case and the question that remains open
Returning to the news story, no study will ever say that online hatred “causes” a suicide. Reality is increasingly complex. But what research tells us is that, in contexts of extreme pain, exposure to hostile social pressure can contribute to the perception of suffering as endless, with no way out.
This is where the story stops being just news and becomes a collective question. How aware are we of the effect of our words when we entrust them to a platform that makes them permanent, replicable, amplified?
Online hate isn’t just about big insults. It is also made up of thrown-away phrases, of “just in case” comments, of judgments that seem small but, put together, build up an enormous weight.
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