{"id":209826,"date":"2022-10-29T09:56:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-29T13:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/?p=209826"},"modified":"2022-11-01T21:08:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T01:08:22","slug":"study-finds-hate-speech-increases-on-twitter-after-elon-musk-acquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/2022\/10\/29\/study-finds-hate-speech-increases-on-twitter-after-elon-musk-acquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Finds Hate Speech Increases on Twitter After Elon Musk Acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b> October 28, 2022 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A team of faculty from the <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/stratcomm\/\">Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University today released a study on the increase in hate speech on Twitter in the hours immediately after Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition of the platform, a transaction that created the perception by extremist users that content restrictions would be alleviated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Highlights from the study from the School\u2019s Center for Strategic Communication include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The seven-day average of Tweets using the studied hate terms prior to Musk\u2019s acquisition was never higher than 84 times per hour.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, on October 28 from midnight to noon (immediately following Musk\u2019s acquisition), the studied hate speech was Tweeted some 4,778 times.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Terms studied included vulgar and hostile terms for individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, and orientation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The potential impact of this hate speech (the potential number of times a term posted in Twitter could have been viewed) was more than 3 million.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Elon Musk has promised to reduce restrictions on the platform and \u201cfree the bird.\u201d From these results, this directive represents an obvious danger to young people using the platform.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Platforms with lax or no moderation are frequently spaces filled with racism, homophobia, transphobia, and antisemitism.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recorded data indicating the spike in hate speech:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The full study, which can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2022\/11\/Montclair-State-SCM-Study-Increases-in-Twitter-Hate-Speech-After-Elon-Musks-Acquisition.pdf\">here<\/a>,\u00a0was conducted by faculty Dr. Jin-A Choi, Dr. Bond Benton, Dr. Yi Luo, and Mr. Keith Green from the <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/stratcomm\/\">Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>,<\/strong> which provides social media analytics tools and training for faculty and students for classroom learning and research projects.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">###<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>About the School of Communication and Media:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Founded in 2012, the School of Communication and Media offers a range of dynamic programs in communication and media to a talented and diverse student population of over 1,500. Offering degrees in film and television, social media and public relations, advertising, journalism and digital media, sports communication, animation and visual effects, and an MA in public and organizational relations, the School prepares the next generation of communication and media practitioners and leaders. The School houses award-winning student programs that include <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wmscradio.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">WMSC Radio<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/themontclarion.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Montclarion<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> newspaper, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/hawkcomms.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hawk Communications<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> PR Agency, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/montclairathletics.com\/sports\/2020\/4\/18\/red-hawk-sports-network.aspx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Red Hawk Sports Network<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/streamstak.com\/hawkplus\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hawk+<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> OTT streaming platform, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/montclairnewslab.tv\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">News Lab<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, as well as the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/centerforcooperativemedia.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Center for Cooperative Media<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which serves the public by working to grow and strengthen local journalism. Recent national School recognitions include an Edward R. Murrow Award, several Marconi Award nominations, and a College Television Award from the Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">###<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Contact: Keith Green, School of Communication and Media, 973-655-3701 or <\/span><a href=\"mailto:greenk@montclair.edu\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">greenk@montclair.edu<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 28, 2022 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A team of faculty from the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University today released a study on the increase in hate speech on Twitter in the hours immediately after Elon Musk\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":209827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-of-communication-and-media-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209826"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209925,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209826\/revisions\/209925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/college-of-communication-and-media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}