IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/17647.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

From Hashtag to Hate Crime: Twitter and Anti-Minority Sentiment

Author

Listed:
  • Schwarz, Carlo
  • Müller, Karsten

Abstract

We study whether social media can amplify anti-minority sentiments with a focus on Donald Trump's political rise. Using an instrumental variable strategy based on Twitter's early adopters at the South by Southwest festival in 2007, we find that higher Twitter use in a county is associated with a sizeable increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the 2016 presidential primaries. Trump's tweets about Muslims predict increases in xenophobic tweets by his followers, cable news mentions of Muslims, and hate crimes on the following days. These results suggest that social media content can affect real-life outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Schwarz, Carlo & Müller, Karsten, 2022. "From Hashtag to Hate Crime: Twitter and Anti-Minority Sentiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 17647, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17647
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP17647
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jiménez Durán, Rafael & Muller, Karsten & Schwarz, Carlo, 2024. "The Effect of Content Moderation on Online and Offline Hate: Evidence from Germany’s NetzDG," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 701, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    2. Gisli Gylfason, 2023. "From Tweets to the Streets: Twitter and Extremist Protests in the United States," PSE Working Papers halshs-04188189, HAL.
    3. Böken, Johannes & Draca, Mirko & Mastrorocco, Nicola & Ornaghi, Arianna, 2023. "The Returns to Viral Media: The Case of US Campaign Contributions," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 681, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Guy Aridor & Rafael Jiménez-Durán & Ro'ee Levy & Lena Song, 2024. "The Economics of Social Media," CESifo Working Paper Series 10934, CESifo.
    5. Müller, Karsten & Pan, Yuanyuan & Schwarz, Carlo, 2024. "Social Media and Stock Market Participation," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 699, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social media; Trump; Hate crime;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17647. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.