Abstract:
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User-generated content online is shaped by many factors, including
endogenous elements such as platform affordances
and norms, as well as exogenous elements, in particular significant
events. These impact what users say, how they say
it, and when they say it. In this paper, we focus on quantifying
the impact of violent events on various types of hate
speech, from offensive and derogatory to intimidation and explicit
calls for violence. We anchor this study in a series of
attacks involving Arabs and Muslims as perpetrators or victims,
occurring in Western countries, that have been covered
extensively by news media. These attacks have fueled intense
policy debates around immigration in various fora, including
online media, which have been marred by racist prejudice and
hateful speech. The focus of our research is to model the effect
of the attacks on the volume and type of hateful speech
on two social media platforms, Twitter and Reddit. Among
other findings, we observe that extremist violence tends to
lead to an increase in online hate speech, particularly on messages
directly advocating violence. Our research has implications
for the way in which hate speech online is monitored
and suggests ways in which it could be fought. |