Where is the surge of anti-Muslim hate on social media coming from?

There’s been a rampant spread of disinformation provocating Islamophobic and anti-Muslim hate in online spaces through “amplifiers” such as bots and sockpuppets that mimic human identities to manipulate conversations online.

During United States first Muslim congressperson Ilhan Omar’s campaign, media researcher Lawrence Pintak found that half the tweets mentioning Omar used overtly Islamophobic or xenophobic language, and that four of these top 20 Islamophobic amplifiers came from bots or sockpuppets.

These bots and sockpuppets would engage in mass retweets and replies, that give more visibility to hate speech against Muslims.

Similar patterns of escalating Islamophobia through fake identities can be found on Facebook, where individuals and groups have presented themselves as Muslims and claim to engage in violent ‘takeovers’ of Danish societies.

While Facebook has attempted to remove some of these pages, they continue to reappear under different disguises.

“These ‘cloaked’ pages succeeded in prompting thousands of hostile and racist comments toward the radical Islamists that users believed were running the pages. But they also prompted anger toward the wider Muslim community in Denmark, including refugees,” writes Saif Shahin, Assistant Professor in School of Communication and Faculty Affiliate with from the Antiracist Research and Policy Center, American University

Shahin notes that exposure to anti-Muslim hate can influence support for limiting the rights of Muslim Americans, while exposure to the challenging of stereotypes of Muslims can reduce support for anti-Muslim policies.

However, with ‘free speech absolutists’ like Elon Musk ruling Twitter, the facade of ‘free speech’ to validate hate speech leads to continued and escalating harassment, violence and targeting of Muslims online and offline.