Insights Into Incitement: A Computational Perspective on Dangerous Speech on Twitter in India

TL;DR

This paper analyzes dangerous speech on Twitter in India, identifying influential accounts that promote violence through language and network analysis, revealing their characteristics and impact on polarization and dissemination.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify dangerous speech users by scoring their influence and analyzes their network roles and audience polarization in the Indian social media context.

Findings

Dangerous users are more active and influential on Twitter.

They tend to have polarized audiences susceptible to incitement.

Most dangerous accounts are mass media or politically aligned broadcasters.

Abstract

Dangerous speech on social media platforms can be framed as blatantly inflammatory, or be couched in innuendo. It is also centrally tied to who engages it - it can be driven by openly sectarian social media accounts, or through subtle nudges by influential accounts, allowing for complex means of reinforcing vilification of marginalized groups, an increasingly significant problem in the media environment in the Global South. We identify dangerous speech by influential accounts on Twitter in India around three key events, examining both the language and networks of messaging that condones or actively promotes violence against vulnerable groups. We characterize dangerous speech users by assigning Danger Amplification Belief scores and show that dangerous users are more active on Twitter as compared to other users as well as most influential in the network, in terms of a larger following as well as volume of verified accounts. We find that dangerous users have a more polarized viewership, suggesting that their audience is more susceptible to incitement. Using a mix of network centrality measures and qualitative analysis, we find that most dangerous accounts tend to either be in mass media related occupations or allied with low-ranking, right-leaning politicians, and act as "broadcasters" in the network, where they are best positioned to spearhead the rapid dissemination of dangerous speech across the platform.