Twitter (now X) is a hotbed of anti-migrant racism. Notably, anti-immigration tweets spread one and a half times quicker on the site when it was Twitter than pro-immigration posts. What’s more, a tiny number of users expressing anti-migrant sentiments were responsible for both the production and spread of this content.
These are the results of a study of more than 200,000 tweets from 2019 and 2020 on the social media site. Of course, this was before Musk took over the site – showing that some of the problems were there already.
Twitter: a hotbed of anti-migrant racism
Andrea Nasuto and Francisco Rowe of the Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool in the UK, have presented these findings in the open-access journal ‘PLOS ONE’.
Nasuto and Rowe analysed 220,870 immigration-related tweets posted in the UK from December 2019 through April 2020. Specifically, they applied natural language processing methods and social network science to explore the three factors. To do so, they built a ‘ChatGPT-like’ language model to identify different stances towards immigration.
Their analysis confirmed a high degree of polarisation between networks of pro and anti-immigration Twitter users in the UK during the study period.
While, the pro-immigration community was 1.69 times larger in number than the anti-immigration community, they had far less reach. Crucially, the anti-immigration community was more active and engaged to a greater degree with each other’s content.
In particular, they identified how anti-immigration content spreads 1.66 times faster than pro-immigration content.
Significantly, they found that within the anti-immigration community, the top 1% of users generated about 23% of anti-immigration tweets.
Largely, bots weren’t hugely influential for either pro or anti-immigration tweets. Overall, they appeared to make up less than 1% of all key producers and spreaders of pro or anti-immigration content.
From social media to real-world violence
There were other stark differences between pro-immigration and anti-immigration users on the platform too.
The top 1% of pro-immigration posters generated almost half the proportion that anti-immigration users produced. This was 12% to anti-immigration users 23%.
Furthermore, the difference was even more pronounced amongst those who disseminated this content. Anti-immigration users comprised over 70% of top 1% spreader accounts – those that retweeted posts. On top of this, while the top 1% spreaders of anti-immigration users generated over 21% of the total retweets of this content, pro-immigration spreaders in the top 1% accounted for markedly less than this. They retweeted little over 6% of the total pro-immigration retweets.
The researchers noted the potential for online anti-immigration content to provoke real-world harm, including violence. On the basis of their findings, they suggested that efforts to curb online hate content might benefit from identification and monitoring of highly active anti-immigration users.
The authors stated that:
A concentrated effort by a few can amplify a message far beyond its origins, redefining the power dynamics of social media.
Crucially, in the research itself, the study authors suggested that:
The extent of the polarization in the online public debate on immigration-related issues in the UK could enhance online violence which can ultimately trickle down to physical actions towards migrants and minorities.
Therefore, the findings are particularly pertinent in light of the UK’s recent race riots. Notably, the authors argued that:
The speed at which anti-immigration content circulates is more than just alarming—it’s dangerous. England’s recent events reveal how fast online narratives can incite real-world violence.
Of course, the data pre-dated these recent events. However, the authors essentially suggested that if this anti-immigration trend has continued on the platform, this type of real-world violence could easily be the result.
Other studies have revealed how the right-wing has swelled on the platform under Musk. And given disinformation on X was partly to blame for fanning the flames of the fascist far-right pogroms, this assessment seems plausible.
The new study might have analysed Twitter from 2019 to 2020, but it still holds relevance for the ongoing impacts of unfettered bigotry festering online. When racist vitriol spills over from social media, marginalised communities will pay the price.
Feature image via the Canary
