Rapid Sharing of Islamophobic Hate on Facebook: The Case of the Tablighi Jamaat Controversy

Abstract

During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw lots of incidents of hate speech, xenophobia, and discrimination where a specific community or people were targeted or accused of being spreaders of the Coronavirus disease. One such prominent episode happened in India, where the Muslim community was targeted for spreading COVID-19. This episode later became known as the “Tablighi Jamaat Controversy” (TJC). We analyzed Facebook posts by public groups during the five months (March to August 2020) that this furor raged to find the major actors and their link-sharing behavior and the presence of (if any) fake news and misinformation. We found that Islamophobic hate speech was spread by the Facebook groups that are Pro-BJP (Bhartiya Janta Party – the leading party in the present Indian government) and have a right-wing ideology, while other groups (anti-hate) were countering the hate. We also found that the hate spreaders were extremely active (three times faster) in sharing their content compared to the anti-hate groups. Lastly, we also found that the highly shared links by the hate spreaders were mostly misinformation. Compared to that, all of the highly shared links by the anti-hate groups were authentic. These results not only explain the usage of the Facebook platform to spread hate and misinformation but also demonstrate how BJP’s pro-Hindu ideology and attitude is directly or indirectly enabling these actors to spew hate against minorities, especially Muslims, with no legal consequences.

“#schleichdiduoaschloch” Terror, Collective Memory, and Social Media

“…Islam itself and Pakistan in particular are often criticized and directly linked to terrorism. This narrative alludes to an Islamophobic polarization of social media in India in recent years, which has already been analyzed in numerous other studies (Ghasiya & Sasahara, 2022;Jose, 2021;Mahapatra & Plagemann, 2019). Also, the narrative that the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 was used to take the blame for subsequent terrorist attacks, which has been propagated in Europe (and especially in right-wing extremist circles), is a recurring motif in this Indian debate (Figure 6).…”