Professional Documents
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Executive Summary
The Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) is an Australian charity dedicated to combating the
rising problem of online hate, particularly in social media. Our focus includes racism, religious
vilification, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, cyber-bullying, and others forms of online hate
speech. We believe hate speech in public online spaces is as unacceptable as hate speech on the
public street. We believe the Internet should not be used as a shield to protect the promotion of
incitement, vilification and bigotry which attacks the human dignity of those who are targeted.
This interim report provides some background and preliminary data from OHPIs forthcoming
Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate Report due to be released in March 2016. This interim
report is being released for International Human Rights Day (10th of December 2015) and in light of
the need to urgently address this growing problem which threatens the inclusivity of our society and
the human dignity of our people.
Anti-Muslim hate has accelerated sharply in 2015. It is based on a misplaced fear of Muslims in
general in response to the actions of specific terrorist groups claiming to act in the name of Islam.
These terrorist actions during the year included: the attacks in France in January on the satirical
publication Charlie Hebdo, a police officer, and a kosher supermarket; the actions of the terrorist
group Daesh (aka: ISIS / ISIL / Islamic State) in Syria; Daeshs social media strategy promoting terror
through graphic videos of violence, including beheadings; concerns over foreign fighters travelling to
Syria from the West, and fear over their actions when they returned; attacks by those who were
unable to travel to Syria to join Daesh; the war in Syria that is creating a major refugee problem, and
which in turn is triggering rising xenophobia.
The messages of anti-Muslim hate online mostly fall into one of eight themes: presenting Muslims as
terrorists and a threat to public safety; promoting threats and violence against Muslims;
dehumanising and demonising Muslims; claiming Muslims are a "threat to our way of life"; claiming
Muslims are manipulative and dishonest; xenophobia against Muslims, including a specific focus on
refugees; efforts to undermine the resistance to hate against Muslims; and efforts to exclude
Muslims from society, for example by preventing Halal certification of food, or the building of new
mosques.
Our Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate campaign ran for a two month period from late
September 2015 to late November 2015. In this period, we collected over 1,100 items of antiMuslim hate in social media which were reported to us by the public through our
FightAgainstHate.com reporting tool. The public categorised these items as they reported them.
OHPI staff have reviewed the items, archived them, and noted which have since been removed by
the platform providers. This interim report provides the preliminary breakdown of items by social
media platform, by the category of anti-Muslim hate, and with details of the removal rates by
category.
Prior to the release of the final report, the data behind the report will have additionally been vetted
by our panel of independent experts led by: Ms Priscilla Brice (All Together Now, Sydney); Dr Denis
MacEoin (Fellow, Middle East Forum, UK); Prof Yin Paradies (Deakin University, Melbourne); Dr
Imran Awan (Birmingham City University, UK); Prof Andrew Jakubowicz (University of Technology
Sydney); and Dr Anne Aly (Curtin University, Perth). The independently vetted data will be shared
with the social media companies with a request for further review. The final report will provide
updated takedown rates after this opportunity has been provided to the social media companies.
The report will also include additional examples of the hate and explanations and discussion about
those examples.
The vast majority of the hate this report is based on was found on Facebook. The vast majority of
this hate has not yet been removed. Earlier today, December 9th in the US, Mark Zuckerberg wrote,
If you're a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are
always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe
environment for you. We strongly support Zuckerbergs words, but our data shows that Facebook is
currently falling far short of this ideal. We hope this interim report, and the later final report, help
Facebook focus their efforts and improve their response when users report anti-Muslim hate.
We invite the public to continue reporting new instances of anti-Muslim hate through our
FightAgainstHate.com software. The final report will include a preliminary breakdown by category of
any further data collected prior to the report going to press. We also invite interested journalists to
contact us in the lead up to the final reports release. Further examples of anti-Muslim hate can be
seen in our 2013 Islamophobia report which will remain the most complete report on anti-Muslim
hate in social media until the final Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate Report is published.
We thank those who donated to our crowd-funding appeal to support this preliminary work, and we
thank the Australian Federal Police and the Islamic Council of Victoria for their financial support. As a
charity we rely on public donations to make what we do possible. Donations are accepted
internationally, and donations from Australia are tax deductible. Please show your support for our
work by donating to the Online Hate Prevention Institute.
As a result of the spread of messages of hate online, our values of multiculturalism, religious
pluralism, and a fair go for all are being challenged. They are being challenged not only at public
rallies, but around the office coffee machine and the water cooler. The messages of hate are being
spread around the dinner table, both at home and when eating out in public. The messages of hate
which spread online are not staying online. They are shared through social media, and then in
person as mobile devices are used to show others memes and anti-Muslim messages. If we can
tackle the problem of online hate, we can make a real difference in the spread of hate both online
and through society.
The Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate Report provides the first significant empirical evidence
on the growing problem of anti-Muslim messages in social media. We believe more needs to be
done to tackle the rising problem of anti-Muslim hate. We believe in evidence based policies and
approaches. We give you this preliminary evidence, with more to follow in March. We hope you find
them both of interest, and of use.
Dr Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute
Xenophobia / anti-refugee, 7%
This graph below gives us a break-up of items reported to FightAgainstHate.com per social media
platforms. More than 90 per cent of the items reports are from Facebook. However, this is not an
indication that there is more anti-Muslim hate present on Facebook. It only indicates that more
people reported anti-Muslim content from Facebook than Twitter and YouTube.
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
92%
20%
online
offline
80%
13%
online
offline
87%
Demonising Muslims
(Facebook)
31%
online
offline
69%
18%
online
offline
82%
Muslims as dishonest
(Facebook)
4%
online
offline
96%
Xenophobia / anti-refugee
(Facebook)
6%
online
offline
94%
4%
online
offline
96%
7%
online
offline
93%