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Hate speech predicts engagement on social media: A case study from Turkey

Kamil Yilmaz Orcid Logo

Security, Terrorism and Society

Swansea University Author: Kamil Yilmaz Orcid Logo

Abstract

What drives engagement on social media has been the focus of social scientific inquiry especially in recent years. Among various established predictors of virality on social media are emotional language, language about in- and out-groups, and notions of positivity and negativity. In light of prior w...

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Published in: Security, Terrorism and Society
Published: 2023
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65074
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Abstract: What drives engagement on social media has been the focus of social scientific inquiry especially in recent years. Among various established predictors of virality on social media are emotional language, language about in- and out-groups, and notions of positivity and negativity. In light of prior work, this study explores whether hate speech in the form of demonization of a social group is associated with engagement on social media by using a case study from Turkey: The Gülen Movement (GM), a once-admired social movement that has been going through a decade-long demonization, stigmatization, criminalization and persecution. The results show that demonizing language against GM (a specific out-group) is a strong predictor of virality in three of the largest social media platforms in Turkey’s social media ecosystem: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The results also show that demonizing language about a specific out-group has the largest effect size compared to other well-established predictors of virality such as the moral-emotional language, language about the in-group and language about the (general) out-group.
Keywords: Hate speech, demonization, social-media, specific out-group, Gülen Movement, Turkey
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

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