Islamophobes are not all the same! A study of far right actors on Twitter

Bertie Vidgen, Taha Yasseri, Helen Margetts

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Far-right actors are often purveyors of Islamophobic hate speech online, using social media to spread divisive and prejudiced messages which can stir up intergroup tensions and conflict. Hateful content can inflict harm on targeted victims, create a sense of fear amongst communities and stir up intergroup tensions and conflict. Accordingly, there is a pressing need to better understand at a granular level how Islamophobia manifests online and who produces it. We investigate the dynamics of Islamophobia amongst followers of a prominent UK far right political party on Twitter, the British National Party. Analysing a new data set of five million tweets, collected over a period of one year, using a machine learning classifier and latent Markov modelling, we identify seven types of Islamophobic far right actors, capturing qualitative, quantitative and temporal differences in their behaviour. Notably, we show that a small number of users are responsible for most of the Islamophobia that we observe. We then discuss the policy implications of this typology in the context of social media regulation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-23
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism
Volume17
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Keywords

  • Far-right
  • hate speech
  • Islamophobia
  • online abuse
  • social media

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