University News Last updated 03 July 2014
An academic from Birmingham City University has published a rare study into the rise in online Islamophobia, revealing the ‘Eight Faces of Hate’ that characterise Islamophobic cyber trolls.
Imran Awan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, looked to Twitter to see if Muslims are viewed differently after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby last year in Woolwich, given the sharp rise in Islamophobia-related incidents following the attack.
Three hashtags - #Woolwich, #Muslim and #Islam – were used to examine patterns regarding online Islamophobia on Twitter, having appeared on the Twitter search engine as words that had recently ‘trended’ in the UK.
From the data collected, the majority of tweets (72 percent) were posted by males and over 75 percent of the tweets examined, displayed a strong Islamophobic feeling, whereby users made use of Muslim stereotypes to justify their abuse. Imran highlighted an example of this where some Twitter users were open about their anger and hatred for all Muslims as a result of recent cases surrounding minority groups of Asian men who were convicted of grooming underage girls.
Imran identified a series of reappearing words and phrases that were used to describe Muslims in a negative manner. These included; ‘Muslim Paedos’ (30 percent), ‘Muslim terrorists’ (22 percent), ‘Muslim scum’ (15 percent), ‘Pisslam’ (10 percent) and Muslim pigs’ (9 percent). The study highlighted how the term ‘#MuslimTerrorists’ became part of the September 11 trending words across Twitter, where Muslims were being depicted through pictures and videos as extremists and terrorists.
Imran Awan, Senior Lecture in Criminology at Birmingham City University, said: "This study highlights that Islamophobia has now reached the virtual environment as well as the many cases we hear about offline abuse, online Islamophobia can be considered the new threat.
“Indeed, what this study shows is that both government and the police need to do much more to tackle the rampant online abuse and harassment Muslims have begun to suffer, in particular post Woolwich which has shown a sharp spike in online anti-Muslim hate."
Categorising the cyber trolls: ‘Eight Faces of Hate’
- The Trawler: Someone who has gone through other people’s twitter accounts to specifically target people with a Muslim connection.
- The Apprentice: A person who is fairly new to Twitter but nonetheless has begun to target people with the help of more experienced online abusers.
- The Disseminator: Someone who has tweeted about and retweeted messages, pictures, and documents of online hate that are specifically targeting Muslims.
- The impersonator: A person who is using a fake profile, account, and images to target individuals.
- The Accessory: A person who is joining in with other peoples conversations via Twitter to target vulnerable people.
- The Reactive: A person who following a major incident, such as Woolwich, or issues on immigration, will begin an online campaign targeting that specific group and individual.
- The Mover: Someone who regularly changes their Twitter account in order to continue targeting someone from a different profile.
- The Professional: A person who has a huge following on Twitter and regardless of consequences has and will launch a major campaign of hate against an individual or group of people because they are Muslim. This person will also have multiple Twitter accounts all aimed at targeting Muslim communities.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal: ‘Policy & Internet’ the study entitled ‘Islamophobia and Twitter: A Typology of Online Hate against Muslims on Social Media' examines a random sample of 500 tweets from 100 different Twitter users, from the UK, which were posted between January 2013 and April 2014.