UK hate crime studies suggest “ordinary people” committed most of them; our research confirms same is true in the US.
Amid the Blaring Headlines, Routine Reports of Hate-Fueled Violence - ProPublica
▻https://www.propublica.org/article/amid-the-blaring-headlines-routine-reports-of-hate-fueled-violence
Earlier this year, ProPublica reported on studies done in Great Britain on hate crimes in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Immigrants in the country faced violence, having been demonized as a threat during the polarizing and ultimately successful effort to withdraw from the European Union. One of the researchers’ findings was that the hate incidents very often did not involve fringe, ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. Instead, they were perpetrated by, as one researcher put it, “ordinary people.”
The accounts marshaled by the Documenting Hate coalition suggest the same is true in the U.S. Amid the hundreds upon hundreds of news reports of crimes and insults and threats we’ve collected, there’s an everyman quality to the accused. While the black man killed in New York was allegedly slain by a consumer of white supremacy propaganda, the immigrant shot to death in Kansas City was allegedly killed by an unremarkable suspect, a man who had worked menial jobs across his life and, according to some associates, been in a spiral of drinking and depression for months.
Hate Speech after Brexit - Demos
▻https://www.demos.co.uk/project/hate-speech-after-brexit
The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos has been undertaking research into the impact that the European Referendum result has had on xenophobia and racism on Twitter, and also how the platform has been used to both report hate speech incidents and to express solidarity with migrants.
A full overview of the study, which also included research into Islamophobia on Twitter in the aftermath of the Brussels terrorist attacks, can be downloaded here:
Brexit and Xenophobia
Islamophobia after the Brussels Attacks
A methodological paper supporting the studies can be downloaded here.
Key findings are highlighted below:
2,413 online reports of hate speech & racial abuse in Brexit aftermath
Exclusive Demos analysis finds 2,413 unique reported incidents from UK streets of hate speech and xenophobic abuse in the week following the EU Referendum
Identifies 13,236 tweets sent in the UK from 24 June–1 July with xenophobic or anti-immigrant attitudes
But study also finds Twitter was used as a platform for expressing solidarity with migrants and challenging racism – with 44,003 tweets sent during the same period under the #SafetyPin support hashtag
New analysis from Demos think tank has captured a significant spike in online and offline hate speech in the aftermath of the European Referendum.