Online Extremism: More Complete Information Needed about Hate Crimes that Occur on the Internet
October 25, 2024
A hate crime occurs nearly every hour in the U.S., based on data reported to the FBI. Investigations of recent hate crimes have suggested that exposure to hate speech on the internet may have contributed to the attackers’ biases against their victims. In 2021, the FBI placed hate crimes at the same national threat priority ...
Ecosystems of Hate: understanding the relationship between terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech
October 24, 2024
Hate underpins a variety of criminal behaviors, including terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech. However, disciplinary fragmentation has obscured their relationships. This chapter reviews the multidisciplinary research evidence concerning the relationships between terrorism, hate crime, and hate speech. It uncovers the empirical and theoretical knowledge gaps, and it proposes a new theoretical framework—Ecosystems of Hate—which ...
Unmasking Malicious Stance Indicators and Attitudinal Priming: An ‘Evaluative Textbite’ Approach to Identity Attacks in Violent Extremist Discourse
October 20, 2024
The article explores the patterning and functioning of attitude semantics in the practice of identity attacks within terrorist communications. Positioned in facework and stance-taking research (e.g. Tracy & Tracy, 1998, 2008, 2017), it introduces the concepts of ‘evaluative textbites’ and ‘attitudinal priming’ to linguistic examinations, advocating a functional approach to unravelling identity attacks, drawing on ...
From online hate speech to offline hate crime: the role of inflammatory language in forecasting violence against migrant and LGBT communities
October 20, 2024
Social media messages often provide insights into offline behaviors. Although hate speech proliferates rapidly across social media platforms, it is rarely recognized as a cybercrime, even when it may be linked to offline hate crimes that typically involve physical violence. This paper aims to anticipate violent acts by analyzing online hate speech (hatred, toxicity, and ...
Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime
September 18, 2023
This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We show that antirefugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in the timing of major Facebook and internet outages. Consistent with a role for “echo chambers,” we ...
Far-Right Extremism: Is it Legitimate Freedom of Expression, Hate Crime, or Terrorism?
September 18, 2023
Following the rise in far-right inspired terrorist attacks globally, social media and electronic communications companies have been criticized, mainly by politicians, for allowing far-right extremist content to be available. This article is a comparative legal study focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.’ legal provisions regarding the right to freedom of ...
White pride worldwide: Constructing global identities online
September 18, 2023
To see the Internet as only a ‘tool’ or ‘resource’ for disseminating ideas and products, as much of the literature has done, is to miss an even more significant aspect of online venues. The Internet is also a site of important ‘identity work’, in which collective identities can be accomplished interactively. This chapter explores how ...
Hatred Behind the Screens – A Report on the Rise of Online Hate Speech
September 18, 2023
— The reporting, recording and incidence of online hate speech has increased over the past two years. — While the number of people personally targeted remains relatively low, large numbers of people are being exposed to online hate speech, potentially causing decreased life satisfaction. In particular, an increasingly large number of UK children (aged 12-15) ...
Taking North American White Supremacist Groups Seriously: The Scope and Challenge of Hate Speech on the Internet
September 18, 2023
This article aims to address two questions: how does hate speech manifest on North American white supremacist websites; and is there a connection between online hate speech and hate crime? Firstly, hate speech is defined and the research methodology upon which the article is based is explained. The ways that ‘hate’ groups utilize the Internet ...