Peer to Peer Hate: Hate Speech Instigators and Their Targets

TLDR

Social media empowers voices but also facilitates online harassment, cyberbullying, and hate speech. The study presents the first comparative analysis of hate speech instigators and their targets on Twitter. We curated a comprehensive hate‑speech dataset through a multi‑step classification process and examined instigators and targets by profiling self‑presentation, activity, online visibility, and personality traits. Hate instigators target popular users and gain greater visibility, while both instigators and targets exhibit eccentric personality traits distinct from the general Twitter population, advancing understanding of online hate‑speech engagement.

Abstract

While social media has become an empowering agent to individual voices and freedom of expression, it also facilitates anti-social behaviors including online harassment, cyberbullying, and hate speech. In this paper, we present the first comparative study of hate speech instigators and target users on Twitter. Through a multi-step classification process, we curate a comprehensive hate speech dataset capturing various types of hate. We study the distinctive characteristics of hate instigators and targets in terms of their profile self-presentation, activities, and online visibility. We find that hate instigators target more popular and high profile Twitter users, and that participating in hate speech can result in greater online visibility. We conduct a personality analysis of hate instigators and targets and show that both groups have eccentric personality facets that differ from the general Twitter population. Our results advance the state of the art of understanding online hate speech engagement.