When and how does hateful online speech lead to real-world violence? Many violent events that dominate the news are preceded by online discussions. The uprisings of the 'Arab Spring' were called 'Twitter revolutions', the storming of the US Capitol was inspired by 'QAnon' online posts, and propaganda on Facebook contributed to the 2017 Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
However, this does not mean every hateful thing said on the Internet leads to actual violence. In fact, hate speech is everywhere, while violence is rare. To understand how online speech leads to offline harm, we need a closer look.
ODAS provides insights by studying Hindu-Muslim tensions in India both online and in the real world. The project is composed of four work packages (WPs).
WP 1 researches how social media can contribute to real-world violence: Does social media simply help coordinate riots and demonstrations, or does it change people’s perceptions in ways that make violence more likely? We have designed a survey for Indian social media users to get to these effects. We present respondents with randomized social media posts, so we can learn about their effects in an experimental framework. Both the pilot and the full survey with 4,000 participants have been conducted, and we are in the process of publishing the results. We find some evidence for social media being used to coordinate violence, and more surprisingly, we find that negative sentiments against out-groups can emerge from seemingly harmless posts. This is important, because censorship of hate speech or disinformation will not be able to address these effects.
WP 2 has developed software to automatically collect online posts from social media in India. We have collected a total of 33 million posts, reposts, and comments, following legal and ethical guidelines. Additionally, we have obtained activist records of attacks on religious minorities in India and data on internet outages. Initial results suggest that certain hashtags conveying Hindu-nationalist ideas precede violent attacks. However, we also find that other tags praising religious unity are followed by decreases in violent attacks. Both of these effects disappear during times of internet outage, suggesting that online access needs to be in place for the statistical connection to hold. A corresponding research article has passed initial peer review and will be published soon. Two more studies are under development, using similar data. One explores how elites can use political tensions to generate support and the other one researches under which circumstances local governments use Internet shutdowns.
WP 3 and 4 research the contexts in which violence is most likely to erupt. To this end, geographic information on group concentrations, socio-economic conditions, and previous violence are used. We plan on statistically analyzing the geographic contexts in which violence is most likely. Additionally, we will use the data collected in WP 2 to see if future violence can be predicted from dangerous speech online. Scholars from Norway, India, Germany, and the US form the project team.
Does hateful online speech lead to real-world violence between religious communities? This question remains unresolved and presents a puzzle: online hate speech is everywhere, while physical violence is rare.
Previous research has focused on the role of social media in individual “hate crimes” or in uprisings against authoritarian rule. However, no large-scale study has yet researched the role of online speech in recent deadly confrontations between Hindus and Muslims in India.
ODAS will leverage insights from Dangerous Speech Theory (DST) to shed much-needed light on the consequences of online speech for offline harm. Following DST, the project will research the mechanisms connecting speakers and audiences in large-scale surveys. Additionally, a novel “Speech Event Dataset” will be coded, using both automated pre-selection and manual coding. Finally, rich context information on settlement locations, demographics, and conflict history will be assembled from existing sources. Combining these data, ODAS will be able to research the effects of online speech on offline harm accounting for context conditions. Beyond causal connections, ODAS will produce actionable predictions of regions at risk of future communal clashes.
Theoretically, ODAS constitutes the first large-scale test of DST. Empirically, ODAS will deliver the first large-scale dataset of dangerous speech events and provide a rigorous test of their consequences for real-world violence. Methodologically, ODAS will break new ground: an innovative setup for coding speech events will be developed featuring automated processing and manual verification. Local conflict history and group demographics will be coded for all of India, benefitting a wider research program on communal conflicts. Key insights will be widely disseminated toward academic audiences, social media providers, stakeholders in India, and online audiences.
Funding scheme:
UTENRIKS-Internasjonale forhold - utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitikk og norske interesser