Online Library

This report presents research carried out within the project (Ku2016/01373/D – Uppdrag till Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut (FOI) att göra kartläggningar och analyser av våldsbejakande extremistisk propaganda) that has been assigned to the Swedish defence research agency by the Swedish Government. The project will continue until March 2019. The report briefly describes the channels of communication that prevail on the Internet, as and the methods used for the analyses. Since computer support makes it possible to analyse large amounts of data and to identify patterns that are difficult for humans to observe, the analyses carried out within the project are mainly computer supported. Using examples, the report provides insight into how proponents of violent extremist ideologies convey their messages online, which we hope can lead to further discussions about propaganda and hate messages. The report also contains some examples of analyses; an analysis of jargon in a webforum, a comparative study of a sample of immigration-critic alternative media, and a machine learning-based study of text written by violent lone offenders.

National governments now recognize online hate speech as a pernicious social problem. In the wake of political votes and terror attacks, hate incidents online and offline are known to peak in tandem. This article examines whether an association exists between both forms of hate, independent of ‘trigger’ events. Using Computational Criminology that draws on data science methods, we link police crime, census and Twitter data to establish a temporal and spatial association between online hate speech that targets race and religion, and offline racially and religiously aggravated crimes in London over an eight-month period. The findings renew our understanding of hate crime as a process, rather than as a discrete event, for the digital age.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

We announced this inquiry into hate crime and its violent consequences in early July 2016. Our decision to undertake the inquiry followed the murder of Jo Cox MP in June in the lead-up to the EU referendum. There was also evidence of an increase in the number of attacks on people from ethnic minorities and of non-British nationality, including on their community centres and places of worship, immediately following the referendum. In addition, our inquiry into antisemitism was already under way, which was raising serious questions about how to address wider issues around the actions of those holding extremist or fixated views. It therefore seemed particularly timely and necessary to launch this
inquiry. We have received a large volume of written evidence. We have taken oral evidence on a wide range of issues including Islamophobia, misogyny, far-right extremism, the role of social media in hate crime and the particular issues faced by Members of Parliament in relation to hate crime and its violent manifestations. Our witnesses have included
academics, community organisations, social media companies, police forces and their representative organisations, the principal Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, and Ministers. We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to the inquiry.

The All Wales Hate Crime Project (Williams & Tregidga 2013, 2014)
highlighted the emerging problem of cyberhate and cyber bulling via social media
through interviews with victims. Opportunities for online engagement have
increased exponentially over the past two decades. In 1999 only 10 per cent of UK
households had access to the Internet. The number had grown to 53 percent in
2005 and to 85 per cent in 2015 (ONS 2015). Estimates put global social media
membership at approximately 2.5 billion non-unique users, with Facebook, Google+
and Twitter accounting for over half of these (Sloan et al. 2015, 2015, Williams et al.
2016). Open and widely accessible social media technologies, such as Twitter and
Facebook, are increasingly being used by citizens on a global scale to publish online
content. The diffusion of information in these networks can manifest itself in a
number of ways, ranging from the positive, such as support of social resilience
through calls for assistance and advice (Morell et al. 2011), to the negative, through
the production and contagion of misinformation and antagonistic and prejudiced
commentary (Burnap et al. 2013, 2014, Williams et al. 2013).

Hate Crime and its commission online is now recognised as a priority by the
UK Government. The sending of menacing messages via the Internet is now
punishable by up to 2 years imprisonment (Malicious Communications Act 1998 as
amended by the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill 2015). The Welsh Government
continues to implement ‘Tackling Hate Crimes and Incidents: A Framework for
Action’ and the fast paced evolution of social media is providing significant
challenges for partners and agencies. Despite this recognition, practitioners can
remain in the dark about the nature, prevalence and resources available to tackle
cyberhate and bulling on social media.
This conference aimed to address this knowledge gap via a series of keynote
presentations from high-profile leaders in the field and via hands on workshops.
This report outlines conference attendee experiences in relation to the current barriers and potential solutions in the area of cyberhate and cyber bullying and puts
forward national recommendations.

The odds in stumbling over extremist material in the internet are high. Counter speech videos, such as those of the German campaign Begriffswelten Islam (Concepts of Islam; Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2015a) published on YouTube, offer alternative perspectives and democratic ideas to counteract extremist content. YouTube users may discuss these videos in the comment sections below the video. Yet, it remains open which topics these users bring up in their comments. Moreover, it is unknown how far user comments in this context may promote hate speech—the very opposite of what counter speeches intent to evoke. By applying a qualitative content analysis on a randomly selected sample of user comments, which appeared beneath the counter speech videos of Concepts of Islam, we found that comments dominated, which dealt with devaluating prejudices and stereotypes towards Muslims and/or Islam. However, we also discovered that users in a large scale discussed the content of the videos. Moreover, we identified user comments, which hint at hateful speech either in comments themselves or the discourse the comments are embedded in. Based on these results, we discuss implications for researchers, practitioners and security agencies.