By Umar Butler / APO
Despite the apparent severity of rising digital Islamophobia, there has been relatively little research into its prevalence and causes. This report aims to change that.
Harnessing cutting-edge machine learning techniques to automatically identify hateful content, this investigation reveals that there were at least 3,759,180 Islamophobic posts made on Twitter between 28 August 2019 and 27 August 2021. Even more concerning, however, is the discovery that only a mere 14.83% of anti-Muslim tweets end up being removed. The researchers conclude from these findings that radical changes are necessary to both Twitter’s moderation policies and online safety laws, without which it is all the more likely that the problem of digital Islamophobia will grow to a point of intractability.
apo-nid318935This report first appeared in apo.org.au