On the morning of October 27th, 2018 Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA chanting “all jews must die.” This shooting, killing eleven congregants and injuring six others, now marks the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States (Robertson et al., 2018) After the shooting, it was discovered the Bowers had been extremely active on the social media website Gab, causing speculation that his anti-Semitic beliefs were exacerbated online. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “much of Bowers’ online profile resembles those of countless other extremist users. Not just on Gab, but on other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Discord and YouTube (Amend, 2018).” Incidents such as this have caused scholars to wonder whether use of social media is aligned with hate crimes. I sought to discover if Facebook, specifically, correlates with anti-Semitic hate crimes in the United States.
Data/Methodology
To conduct this research I gathered data regarding the number of active Facebook users and anti-Semitic hate crimes in the U.S. from 2003 to 2019. To gather data on the number of Facebook users I utilized Facebook annual reports. Facebook was a fitting choice for this type of research because it was the pioneer for social media, the number of users on Facebook has consistently increased over the years, and it is the social media platform with the highest number of adult users daily (2022). To gather data on crime statistics, I utilized the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is a nationwide program where police departments report crime statistics across a variety of categories. This program encompasses over 18,000 law enforcement agencies and represents over a million inhabitants (2018).
Once the data was collected, I was able to add two control variables to my research that may also have an affect on anti-Jewish hate crimes in the United States. My first control variable was created to represent the conflict between Israel and Palestine’s effect on perceptions of Jewish people. To determine this phenomena, I used criteria representing events that display both a positive and a negative reflection of Israel. The second control was created for changes in the U.S. political environment, specifically Presidential parties, House majority parties, and Senate majority parties. I chose to control for changes in political power because political instability or increased polarization stemming from political leaders may impact societal attitudes towards minority groups. These controls provided extremely valuable results, that, ultimately, may explain anti-Jewish hate crimes more than Facebook itself.
Results
To study this data, I ran three regressions in the statistical software SPSS. For each regression, both the independent and dependent variables were set as a rate per 100,000 people.
For my first regression the independent variable is Facebook and the dependent variable is anti-Jewish incidents. The findings show that for every 1 standard deviation increase in Facebook there is a 0.575 decrease in anti-jewish incidents as a rate.
In my second regression, the independent variable is Facebook and the dependent variable is hate crimes in the U.S. in general. I decided to explore general hate crimes to understand whether or not anti-jewish hate crimes were distinct from overall hate crimes in their relationship to Facebook use. The results show that there is an even stronger decrease, of 0.628, in hate crimes as the Facebook rate increases by 1 standard deviation than the anti-Jewish regression.
For my last regression, Facebook is the independent variable and anti-Jewish hate crimes is the dependent variable, but I also implemented my two controls. The output of this regression shows us that the control variables alone explain 85.6% of the variability, then with the addition of Facebook they explain 88.8% of the variability. Meaning, Facebook only explains an additional 3.2% of the variance in our outcome, which is minor.
Data Visualization
To further explore this phenomena, I created graphical displays to observe common patterns in the data over time. This first graph shows the violent crime rate in the United States. Hate crimes, both anti-Jewish and in general, are a subset of violent crimes in the United States, therefore, by exploring trends in violent crimes we can create a basis of comparison for more specific hate crimes.
Narrowing into hate crimes in general, it is clear that they show a very similar pattern to the violent crime rate data, with more specific increases and decreases that result from a smaller sample size.
This last graph shows anti-Jewish incidents in the United States. The trends are also remarkably similar to the violent crime rate and hate crime graphs. This may offer partial explanation that anti-Jewish incidents may simply be a subset of overall trends in crimes within the United States. Though this phenomena would require further exploration, it does offer valuable insight. Additionally, it is clear that as the Facebook rate increases, anti-Jewish incidents do not increase. Further proving the results that were found in the regression, showing a slight negative correlation between the two variables.
Implications
This study’s results provided valuable insight into the relationship between Facebook use and anti-Semitic hate crimes as well as displayed compelling patterns in the data. By running regressions while controlling for other potential factors that may impact anti-Semitic hate crime rates, I was able to explore beyond the initial connection to Facebook and gain insight on how perceptions of Israel and the political environment correlate with anti-Semitic hate crimes. Additionally, by graphically displaying trends in violent crimes, hate crimes, and anti-Semitic hate crimes, I was able to discover the consistent patterns that each of these graph’s display. By analyzing both the regressions and graphs, it is clear that Facebook and anti-Semitic hate crimes in the United States have a slight negative correlation.
Rachel Goodwin is a senior in the O’Neill school of Public and Environmental Affairs studying Public Management and Leadership with a minor in International Relations
Leave a Reply