Online Library

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict started on 7 October 2023, have resulted thus far to over 48,000 people killed including more than 17,000 children with a majority from Gaza, more than 30,000 people injured, over 10,000 missing, and over 1 million people displaced, fleeing conflict zones. The infrastructure damage includes the 87\% of housing units, 80\% of public buildings and 60\% of cropland 17 out of 36 hospitals, 68\% of road networks and 87\% of school buildings damaged. This conflict has as well launched an online discussion across various social media platforms. Telegram was no exception due to its encrypted communication and highly involved audience. The current study will cover an analysis of the related discussion in relation to different participants of the conflict and sentiment represented in those discussion. To this end, we prepared a dataset of 125K messages shared on channels in Telegram spanning from 23 October 2025 until today. Additionally, we apply the same analysis in two publicly available datasets from Twitter containing 2001 tweets and from Reddit containing 2M opinions. We apply a volume analysis across the three datasets, entity extraction and then proceed to BERT topic analysis in order to extract common themes or topics. Next, we apply sentiment analysis to analyze the emotional tone of the discussions. Our findings hint at polarized narratives as the hallmark of how political factions and outsiders mold public opinion. We also analyze the sentiment-topic prevalence relationship, detailing the trends that may show manipulation and attempts of propaganda by the involved parties. This will give a better understanding of the online discourse on the Israel-Palestine conflict and contribute to the knowledge on the dynamics of social media communication during geopolitical crises.

Do social media companies exacerbate antisemitism and hate through their own recommendation and amplification tools? We investigated how four of the biggest social media platforms treated users who searched for or engaged with content related to anti-Jewish tropes, conspiracy theories, and other topics. Three of them–Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter1 (now known as X after a rebranding by owner Elon Musk)–filled their feeds with far more antisemitic content and conspiratorial accounts and recommended the most hateful influencers and pages to follow. One platform, YouTube, did not.

In this joint study by the ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) and Tech Transparency Project (TTP), researchers created six test personas of different ages and genders and set up accounts for them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Researchers had them search each platform for a basket of terms related to conspiracy theories as well as popular internet personalities, commentators, and video games. The study then examined the content that the platforms’ algorithms recommended to these hypothetical users.

Do social media and search companies exacerbate antisemitism and hate through their own design and system functions? In this joint study by the ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) and Tech Transparency Project (TTP), we investigated search functions on both social media platforms and Google. Our results show how these companies’ own tools–such as autocomplete and auto-generation of content–made finding and engaging with antisemitism easier and faster.1 In some cases, the companies even helped create the content themselves.

Our researchers compiled a list of 130 hate groups and movements from ADL’s Glossary of Extremism, picking terms that were tagged in the glossary with all three of the following categories: “groups/movements,” “white supremacist,” and “antisemitism.”2 The researchers then typed each term into the respective search bars of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and recorded the results.

Severe online hate and harassment increased four points across the board in the past year, which was dominated by an unprecedented surge in antisemitism online and offline in the wake of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7. Decreases in platform enforcement and data access and new threats of hate and disinformation from generative AI tools all potentially contributed to this year’s findings.

ADL conducts this nationally representative survey annually to find out how many American adults experience hate or harassment on social media. Since 2022, we have also surveyed teens ages 13-17. This survey was conducted in February and March 2024 and asked about the preceding 12 months.

Key Findings

• Severe harassment overall went up: 22% of Americans experienced severe harassment¹ on social media in the past 12 months, an increase from 18% in 2023 (including an increase in physical threats from 7% to 10%).
• Harassment by disability: People with disabilities were more likely to be harassed than non-disabled people, 45% compared to 36% respectively for any harassment and 31% vs. 19% for severe harassment.
• People with disabilities were more likely to be harassed than in the year before, 45% compared to 35% for any harassment and 31% vs. 20% for severe harassment
• Harassment for disability spiked: Reasons for online harassment in the past 12 months remained stable, except for disability, which spiked from 4% to 12%, despite the proportion of disabled respondents remaining similar.
• LGBTQ+ people were the most harassed of the marginalized groups surveyed: LGBTQ+ people experienced increases in physical threats (from 6% to 14%), while transgender people, as a subgroup, reported severe harassment to a higher degree from last year (from 30% to 45%).
• Jewish adults were more likely to be harassed for their religion (34% of those harassed compared to 18% of non-Jews) and 41% changed their online behavior to avoid being recognized as Jewish. Nearly two-thirds (63%) felt less safe than they did last year.
• Platforms: Facebook remains the most common platform where harassment was experienced at 61% of harassment, while the incidence of harassment rose on WhatsApp (from 14% to 25%) and Telegram (from 7% to 13%).

Key Recommendations

Allow researchers inside the black box: The federal government should broaden data access for researchers and follow California’s lead and require technology companies to standardize transparency reporting and broaden data access.

Address hate on messaging apps: Messaging platforms should strengthen anti-hate policies and invest in tools to combat hate and harassment.

Support targets of hate: Platforms should implement recommended reporting tools and features that reduce hate and improve abuse reporting.

Invest in trust and safety: Tech companies should increase trust and safety resources (human and automated) to ensure platforms are enforcing their rules around hate speech and violence.

VOX-Pol Blog post.