Every day in the month of July, close to 7,000 Islamophobic tweets in English were generated globally, according to a study conducted by the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media in Demos, a think-tank. This is compared to the 2,500 generated in April. A surge against Muslims particularly occurred following the terrorist attack in Nice, France.
“Over July, we identified 215,247 tweets, sent in English and from around the world, as highly likely to be hateful, derogatory, and anti-Islamic. On average, this is 289 per hour, or 6,943 per day,” the report said.
Apart from the Nice attack (21,190 tweets), the Dhaka café attack in Bangladesh drew wide-spread criticism toward the Muslim community. The attack was carried out by the Islamic State. Four days after the attack, on July 5, 9,220 tweets were generated.
On July 8, a day after five police officers were killed in Dallas during a #BlackLivesMatters rally, 11,320 tweets were posted. The failed coup in Turkey also received backlash—the Twitterati viewed this as an attack on secularism—leaving 10,610 tweets against the rebellious attack. Last, on July 26, the day after a Christian priest was beheaded in a Normandy church by IS members, 8,950 tweets were posted.
“Many of the tweets identified as derogatory and anti-Islamic included specific references to recent acts of violence and attacked entire Muslim communities in the context of terrorism,” Demos added.
As part of its research, Demos used 49 words and hashtags to identify “anti-Islamic tweets”. The team concludes that Islamophobia is increasing every month; July has the highest rate since the team’s study began in March. Since March, there has been an average of 4,972 English tweets per day.
The countries from which most tweets are originating include the UK, Netherlands, France and Germany.
