The Virality of Hate Speech on Social Media
Authors: Abdurahman Maarouf, Nicolas Pröllochs, Stefan Feuerriegel
AI-generated Key Points
- Hate speech on social media poses a significant threat to vulnerable groups and society as a whole
- Examples of real-world consequences include the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018
- The authors collected a dataset of Twitter cascades and classified them as hateful or normal content
- Hateful content authored by verified users is more likely to go viral compared to non-verified users
- Verified users' hateful content had larger cascade size, longer cascade lifetime, and greater structural virality compared to normal content
- This study provides insights into the factors contributing to the spread of hate speech on social media platforms
Abstract: Online hate speech is responsible for violent attacks such as, e.g., the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, thereby posing a significant threat to vulnerable groups and society in general. However, little is known about what makes hate speech on social media go viral. In this paper, we collected N = 25,219 Twitter cascades with 65,946 retweets and classify them as hateful vs. normal. Using a generalized linear regression, we then estimate differences in the spread of hateful vs. normal content based on author and content variables. We thereby identify important determinants that explain differences in the spreading of hateful vs. normal content. For example, hateful content authored by verified users is disproportionally more likely to go viral than hateful content from non-verified ones: hateful content from a verified user (as opposed to normal content) has a 3.5 times larger cascade size, a 3.2 times longer cascade lifetime, and a 1.2 times larger structural virality. Altogether, we offer novel insights into the virality of hate speech on social media.
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