Citation

Williams ML, Burnap P, Javed A, Liu H, Ozalp S. Br. J. Criminol. 2020; 60(1): 93-117.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/bjc/azz049

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

National governments now recognize online hate speech as a pernicious social problem. In the wake of political votes and terror attacks, hate incidents online and offline are known to peak in tandem. This article examines whether an association exists between both forms of hate, independent of ‘trigger’ events. Using Computational Criminology that draws on data science methods, we link police crime, census and Twitter data to establish a temporal and spatial association between online hate speech that targets race and religion, and offline racially and religiously aggravated crimes in London over an eight-month period. The findings renew our understanding of hate crime as a process, rather than as a discrete event, for the digital age.

Language: en