As pre-legislative scrutiny of the Government’s Online Safety
Bill begins this week, experts have warned that even the largest
platforms have not yet got to grips with racism on their
services. A new report produced jointly by the Community Security
Trust (CST) and Antisemitism Policy Trust, based on original
research by data scientists at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge
shows that people exposed to antisemitism on Instagram
are not necessarily searching for it, potentially acting
as a gateway to further hate.
The report, which can be accessed by clicking on the image below,
found that antisemitism on Instagram is strongly linked to a
trolling phenomenon on the platform, chaotic in nature, through
which antisemitism is deployed alongside both offensive but
sometimes seemingly random images are phrases.
The report’s key findings include that:
- People exposed to antisemitism on Instagram are not
necessarily searching for it and can be drawn in from conspiracy
theory or other materials. Antisemitic Instagram hashtags,
alongside hashtags with demonstrable links to antisemitism, were
viewed tens of thousands of times during our seven-week research
period. Worryingly, the hashtags also generated thousands of
likes.
- Antisemitism on Instagram is significantly associated with a
trolling phenomenon on the platform. Trolling of this type is
chaotic in nature and often characterised by an incoherent mix of
images and phrases. Some content is explicitly and coherently
antisemitic, some links to related themes (such as conspiracy
theories) and some uses antisemitic phrases alongside other
offensive but seemingly random images and phrases. Hashtags
including #illuminati #5g #deepstate for example, correlate with
the use of #thegoyimknow and #zionistagenda. It is antisemitic
chaos.
- Similarly, antisemitism on Instagram has a strong association
with anti-Israel attitudes. This builds on previous research that
has provided evidence of a strong link between anti-Jewish and
anti-Israel attitudes in real-world settings.[1]
The study includes details of the various big data searches
carried out, and includes further findings, for example that
hashtags that are either antisemitic or commonly associated with
antisemitism are often used alongside hashtags related to
conspiracy theories. In the cases we observed, this included
conspiracy theories concerning chemtrails, 5G, and paedophilia.
The report builds on findings released last month by the Centre for
Countering Digital Hate which found that 84% of posts containing
anti-Jewish hatred were not acted upon by social media companies,
including Instagram.[2] The research conducted by
the Woolf Institute sheds light, for the first time, on the scale
of antisemitism on Instagram.
Danny Stone MBE, Chief Executive of the Antisemitism Policy
Trust said: “Anyone that has followed stories from the worlds of
football, motor racing and politics will know that social media
abuse is awful and relentless. As our report shows, enforcement by
platforms remains totally inadequate. The Online Safety Bill will
provide a chance to turn the tide on this unregulated industry, and
so I hope we will see the introduction of a wide-ranging duty of
care to prevent this foreseeable harm from spreading
further.”
Mark Gardner, Chief Executive of the Community Security
Trust, said: “This report demonstrates that Instagram falls short
of its own policies. Once again we have a leading social media
platform that directs its users into a spiral of hatred and
conspiracy theories.”
[1]
https://cst.org.uk/public/data/file/7/4/JPR.2017.Antisemitism%20in%20contemporary%20Great%20Britain.pdf
[2]
https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_08ab7f4e6ef44ff4a05044d8aef3f3b7.pdf
