Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime
研究发现Facebook上的反难民情绪能预测针对难民的仇恨犯罪，尤其在社交媒体使用率高的地区；通过利用Facebook和互联网中断的外生变化建立因果关系，表明社交媒体通过传播极端观点助长暴力犯罪。
Abstract This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We show that antirefugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in the timing of major Facebook and internet outages. Consistent with a role for “echo chambers,” we find that right-wing social media posts contain narrower and more loaded content than news reports. Our results suggest that social media can act as a propagation mechanism for violent crimes by enabling the spread of extreme viewpoints.