Jeroen Bakker

Research commissioned by CIDI.

Summary:

The research focuses on textual expressions on six different mainstreamsources: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Telegram and a selection of weblogs and
websites. Using automatic classification models, this study has
200.395 expressions of online anti-Semitism in 2020 examined. The most important
findings of this study are per platform:

1. On Twitter we find by far the most anti-Semitic expressions in the corner of the rightconservative accounts and conspiracy theorists. Within this group, in absolute
numbers more than seven times as many anti-Semitic messages posted than by the
group with the second most anti-Semitic expressions. It is striking that this cluster
at the same time has close ties to pro-Israel accounts. The anti-Semitism in this
group often targets well-known targets of conspiracy theorists: the jewish
Billionaire George Soros and the Bilderberg Conference.

2. On websites, blogs and forums appear to contain the majority of anti-Semitic expressions
find in the comments left by users. George play here too
Soros and Bilderberg a leading role. Right-wing populist news sites and conspiracy blogs
are dominant in both absolute and relative terms in the number of anti-Semitic statements.

3. The number of anti-Semitic messages on Facebook is relatively low in this study. Now That
is largely due to limited access to Facebook data. The share
anti-Semitic messaging is about eight times higher in Facebook groups than on
Facebook pages. In the groups with the most anti-Semitic messages we find
lots of conspiracy theories; also from a Christian background.

4. On Telegram we see a lot of anti-Semitism in youth groups. This antisemitism
is much more explicit than we find on Facebook and Twitter: 'Jewish' here becomes as
swear word used, and Judaism presented as something contemptible. De
anti-Semitic expressions are less politicized here. In addition to youth groups
do we also find antisemitism in conspiracy groups, where the form is also more explicit than
in similar conspiracy groups on Facebook and Twitter.

5. We find a relatively high amount of anti-Semitism on YouTube: striking here is that the
anti-Semitic statements are mainly placed under videos from mainstreamchannels, like PowNed, WNL, Telegraaf and Rijnmond.

6. On Reddit we see less clear patterns in the anti-Semitic expressions, especially
because conspiracy theories are discussed here ironically to a great extent, and the for
our computer models are still relatively difficult, revealing subtle forms of irony of
to distinguish seriousness. We do see many implicit anti-Semitic expressions in the
(unofficial) Forum for Democracy subreddit, while the explicit anti-Semitic
expressions mainly concern the use of 'Jewish' as ​​a swear word