In person icon Exploring the Nexus Between Online Hate Speech and Real-Life Political Violence

Abstract

In the digital era, political violence transcends traditional boundaries, manifesting itself both in online spaces and in real-life behaviors. Social media platforms have become global megaphones, amplifying hate speech, dividing societies and polarizing public discourse. Migrants, refugees, ethnic, religious and social minorities, social activists, protesters and human rights defenders as well as state officials and police forces are frequent targets of online attacks. They are often scapegoated and blamed for societal challenges, crime, economic vulnerabilities, and social insecurities. This targeted aggression, based on inherent characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, or descent, on personal choices, political ideologies and professional positions contaminates public dialogue, undermines social peace and cohesion, and fuels aggressive sentiments that foster distrust, suspicion and hostility within the social fabric. Verbal aggression and polemic expressiveness escalate tensions paving the way for real-life violence. The emotional load carried by such rhetoric serves as a catalyst for social fragmentation, polarization and violent attacks. Online social networks are, hence, becoming increasingly important in political conflicts and contentious situations, with politicized online environments supplying a growing potential for outbreaks of political violence. This panel seeks to explore the intersection between online verbal aggression and offline political violence. The literature has primarily examined the link between online hate speech and offline racially and religiously aggravated crimes (Williams et al. 2020, Köffer et al. 2018, Chan et al. 2016). The rise in online hate speech has coincided with major events, such as the Brexit vote and terrorist attacks, and is often driven by a core group of producers. In the summer of 2024, far-right groups in the UK used Telegram to spread extremist rhetoric and organize anti-immigrant riots. This example illustrates how online and offline hostility are interconnected and self-reinforcing (Lupu et al. 2023), and how social media and their own linguistic patterns (Hswen et al. 2021) have become a catalyst for hate ideologies and aggression to spread more widely, even facilitating the organization of violent actions motivated by xenophobia and ressentiment in the offline world. Another important point is that the digital world also offers opportunities for recruiting or training individuals to carry out violent acts. This panel aims to broaden the scope by encompassing a wider spectrum of violence, including aspects of political violence beyond hate speech and xenophobic attacks. We invite contributions that will delve into the following questions: •Is online violent speech and offline violence mutually reinforcing, and if so, how? •Which cognitive and psychological mechanisms link online violence to real-life violent behaviors? •What aspects and expressions of offline political violence are mostly affected by the online ecosystem? •To what extent and how do online platforms enable the organization and execution of politically motivated violence? •Is the online blueprint of different kinds of political violence similar or different? •How does the emotional aspect of online violence influence offline actions? The panel aims to bring together a variety of theoretical frameworks, different methodological pathways, new empirical evidence, case studies and comparative approaches that will shed light into the dynamics between online hate speech and offline political violence.

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