Social media key in hate forecasting, U.S. academic tells antisemitism conference

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This article was published 17/10/2023 (1091 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Just as there are early warning systems for hurricanes and tornadoes, Canadians should pay attention to social media in order to see hate approaching.

That’s the view of Joel Finkelstein, chief science officer and co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Hate on social media “is a predictor about real-world actions,” Finkelstein told the Free Press at the two-day Antisemitism: Face It, Fight It conference in Ottawa that wrapped up Tuesday.

“What we see on social media turns up in real life,” he said, comparing his work to those who forecast storms. “Social media is a signal of what’s to come.”

This is true whenever there is a conflict in Israel, he said, noting that online activity translates into real-world hate.

“The conflicts are short, but there is a long tail, a spillover effect,” he said.

By way of illustration, Finkelstein pointed to a report about a conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza in 2021.

An analysis by the Institute of more than 100 million social media posts at that time showed a relationship between online antisemitic remarks on social media platforms and actions a week or two later against Jews, including in Toronto and Montreal.

This included chanting antisemitic and violent slogans against Jews during protests, vandalism of synagogues, hate graffiti in Jewish neighbourhoods among other hate crimes.

With the current war between Israel and Hamas, “there is looming anticipation of a similar surge in antisemitism in Canada,” he said. “We have already started to see several similar trends emerging.”

Content on social media is created and shared by ideological hate groups, he said, but then propelled by bot farms and troll accounts operated by authoritarian regimes such as China, North Korea and some in the Middle East — regimes that “want to disrupt and destabilize western democracies.”

Finkelstein also tracks hate directed at other visible minorities in the U.S., such as Muslims and Hindus, reporting the findings to law-enforcement agencies, the FBI, politicians and others.

This includes reporting to social media companies to let them know what’s happening on their platforms. “We alert them so they can respond in good faith,” he said.

Finkelstein believes Jews could lead the way in helping to set up such an early warning system in this country.

“It should not just be for Jews, but we should make it possible,” he said, adding “community security must evolve in the age of information disorder to meet these threats with faster, real-time data collection.”

Becca Wertman-Traub directs research for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. She agreed with Finkelstein that such an early warning system would be helpful in Canada.

“In 2021, we didn’t make the connection between social media and actions,” she said. “Now we are aware of the relationship between the two. It shows we can anticipate something after a spike in online hate towards Jews.”

Currently, most of what CIJA can do is reactive, since information about hate from Statistics Canada is a year old, based on reports from police across the country, she explained.

That is like doing cleanup and recovery work after a storm instead of proactively getting people, governments and police ready so they can be prepared and weather it better, she said.

That’s why research by people such as Finkelstein is so important.

“By tracking social media, we can get current data by the day, hour and minute,” she said. “We can act much quicker.”

Such a system doesn’t currently exist in Canada, but CIJA is exploring it as an option, she noted.

The conference, the first national event of its kind in Canada, is sponsored by CIJA, with support from Jewish federations across Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg.

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