While a great deal of research has been devoted to deﬁning and detecting
online hate speech, we know surprisingly little about the popularity of online
hate speech on either mainstream or fringe platforms, or how the volume of
hate speech shifts in response to events on the ground. Social media platforms
have increased the visibility of hate speech, prompting journalists and
academics alike to assert that hate speech is on the rise. As a result, there is
a tendency to characterize entire mainstream social media platforms as
bastions of online hate, without using empirical evidence to evaluate how
pervasive the phenomenon truly is. For example, after becoming the target of
a hateful online attack, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg called Twitter “a
cesspool for anti-Semites, homophobes, and racists” (Lizza 2016). While any
online hate speech is of course problematic, suggesting that a platform used
by more than a quarter of Americans and millions more around the globe is
Social_Media_and_Democracy