Abstract: The spread of hate speech and anti-Semitic content has become endemic to social media. Faced
with a torrent of violent and offensive content, nations in Europe have begun to take measures to
remove such content from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, these
measures have failed to curtail the spread, and possible impact of anti-Semitic content. Notably,
violence breeds violence and calls for action against Jewish minorities soon lead to calls for
violence against other ethnic or racial minorities. Online anti-Semitism thus drives social tensions
and harms social cohesion. Yet the spread of online anti-Semitism also has international
ramifications as conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns now often focus on WWII and
the Holocaust.
On Nov 29, 2019, the Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group (DigDiploROx) held a one-day
symposium at the European Commission in Brussels. The symposium brought together diplomats,
EU officials, academics and civil society organizations in order to search for new ways to combat
the rise in online anti-Semitism. This policy brief offers an overview of the day’s discussions, the
challenges identified and a set of solutions that may aid nations looking to stem the flow of antiSemitic content online. Notably, these solutions, or recommendations, are not limited to the realm
of anti-Semitism and can to help combat all forms of discrimination, hate and bigotry online.
Chief among these recommendations is the need for a multi-stakeholder solution that brings
together governments, multilateral organisations, academic institutions, tech companies and
NGOs. For the EU itself, there is a need to increase collaborations between units dedicated to
fighting online crime, terrorism and anti-Semitism. This would enable the EU to share skills,
resources and working procedures. Moreover, the EU must adopt technological solutions, such as
automation, to identify, flag and remove hateful content in the quickest way possible. The EU
could also redefine its main activities - rather than combat incitement to violence online, it may
attempt to tackle incitement to hate, given that hate metastases online to calls for violence.
Finally, the EU should deepen its awareness to the potential harm of search engines. These offer
access to content that has already been removed by social media companies. Moreover, search
engines serve as a gateway to hateful content. The EU should thus deepen is collaborations with
companies such as Google and Yahoo, and not just Facebook or Twitter. It should be noted that
social media companies opted not to take part in the symposium demonstrating that the solution
to hate speech and rising anti-Semitism may be in legislation and not just in collaboration.
The rest of this brief consists of five parts. The first offers an up-to-date analysis of the prevalence
of anti-Semitic content online. The second, discuss the national and international implications of
this prevalence. The third part stresses the need for a multi-stakeholder solution while the fourth
offers an overview of the presentations made at the symposium. The final section includes a set
of policy recommendations that should be adopted by the EU and its members states.
Abstract: Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, antisemitic scapegoating has surfaced, giving ammunition to antisemites and extremists looking for someone to blame. Online, memes have been circulating espousing antisemitism, whilst offline, several public figures and others in the public eye have alluded to Jews being the cause of the pandemic. Blame and scapegoating of Jews is not new, and it didn’t take long for antisemitism to mutate. Concerning coronavirus, Jews have not been the primary target for hatred. Anti-Chinese messages are being shared online, with references to the “Chinese flu”, the “Wuhan virus” and the “kung flu”. This collective blame leading to denigration
of, and attacks on, people of Chinese descendent, is reminiscent the collective blame in antisemitic conspiracy theories. This briefing highlights several examples of scapegoating of Jews for earlier global pandemics and addresses Covid related antisemitism in the United Kingdom and globally.
Abstract: Developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are prompting governments across the globe, and experts from across multiple sectors, to future proof society. In the UK, Ministers have published a discussion paper on the capabilities, opportunities and risks presented by frontier artificial intelligence. The document outlines that whilst AI has many benefits, it can act as a simple, accessible and cheap tool for the dissemination of disinformation, and could be misused by terrorists to enhance their capabilities. The document warns that AI technology will become so advanced and realistic, that it will be nearly impossible to distinguish deep fakes and other fake content from real content. AI could also be used to incite violence and reduce people’s trust in true information.
It is clear that mitigating risks from AI will become the next great challenge for governments, and for society.
Of all the possible risks, the Antisemitism Policy Trust is focused on the development of systems that facilitate
the promotion, amplification and sophistication of discriminatory and racist content, that is material
that can incite hatred of and harm to Jewish people.
This briefing explores how AI can be used to spread antisemitism. It also shows that AI can offer benefits
in combating antisemitism online and discusses ways to mitigate the risks of AI in relation to anti-Jewish
racism. We set out our recommendations for action, including the development of system risk assessments,
transparency and penalties for any failure to act.
Abstract: Reflecting on the months since the recent October 7 attack, rarely has the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2024, ‘The Fragility of Freedom’, felt so poignant. Communities globally experienced the shattering of presumed security, and antisemitic incidents responsively spiked.
Antisemitism rose across both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, and communities resultantly reported a rise in insecurity and fear. CCOA constituent countries have recorded significant rises in antisemitic incidents, including an immediate 240% increase in Germany, a three-fold rise in France, and a marked increase in Italy.
The antisemitism landscape, including Holocaust denial and distortion, had shifted so drastically since October 7 that previous assumptions and understands now demand re-examination. In the run up to Holocaust Memorial Day 2024, this research compilation by members of the Coalition to Counter Online Antisemitism offers a vital contemporary examination of the current and emergent issues facing Holocaust denial and distortion online. As unique forms of antisemitism, denial and distortion are a tool of historical revisionism which specifically targets Jews, eroding Jewish experience and threatening democracy.
Across different geographies and knowledge fields, this compilation unites experts around the central and sustained proliferation of Holocaust denial and distortion on social media.
Abstract: This chapter introduces the notion of ‘enabling concepts’: concepts which may or may not themselves constitute a mode of hate speech, but which through their broad social acceptability facilitate or legitimate the articulation of concepts which can be more directly classed as hate speech. We argue that each distinct hate ideology will contain its own, partly overlapping set of ‘enabling concepts.’ In this chapter, we will focus on the enabling role of references to apartheid for the constitution of antisemitism in British online discourse around Israel. This argument does not rest on agreement as to whether the ‘apartheid analogy’—comparisons between contemporary Israel and the former Apartheid regime in South Africa—itself constitutes a form of antisemitism. The chapter draws on qualitative analysis of more than 10,000 user comments posted on social media profiles of mainstream media in the UK, undertaken by the Decoding Antisemitism project in the wake of the May 2021 escalation phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will show how web commenters frequently use the apartheid analogy to trigger more extreme antisemitic stereotypes, including age-old tropes, intensifying and distorting analogies (such as Nazi comparisons) or calls for Israel’s elimination. The results will be presented in detail based on a pragmalinguistic approach taking into account the immediate context of the comment thread and broader world knowledge. Both of these aspects are relevant preconditions for examining all forms of antisemitic hate speech that can remain undetected when conducting solely statistical analysis. Based on this large dataset, we suggest that—under the cover of its widespread social acceptability—the apartheid analogy thus facilitates the articulation and legitimation of extreme antisemitic concepts that would, without this prior legitimation, be more likely to be rejected or countered.
Abstract: Over the past 3.5 years, the Decoding Antisemitism research project has been analysing antisemitism on the internet in terms of content, structure, and frequency. Over this time, there has been no shortage of flashpoints which have generated antisemitic responses. Yet the online response to the Hamas attacks of 7 October and the subsequent Israeli operations in Gaza has surpassed anything the project has witnessed before. In no preceding escalation phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict has the predominant antisemitic reaction been one of open jubilation and joy over the deaths of Israeli Jews. As demonstrated in the sixth and final Discourse Report, this explicit approval of the Hamas attacks was the primary response from web users. The response to 7 October therefore represents a turning point in antisemitic online discourse, and its repercussions will be felt long into the future.
The report contains analysis of the various stages of online reactions to events in the Middle East, from the immediate aftermath to the Israeli retaliations and subsequent accusations of genocide against Israel. As well as examining online reactions in the project’s core focus—the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—this report also, for the first time, extends its view to analyse Israel-related web discourses in six further countries, including those in Southern and Eastern Europe as well as in North Africa. Alongside reactions to the escalation phase, the report also examines online responses to billionaire Elon Musk’s explosive comments about Jewish individuals and institutions.
Additionally, the report provides a retrospective overview of the project’s development over the past 3.5 years, tracking its successes and challenges, particularly regarding the conditions for successful interdisciplinary work and the ability of machine learning to capture the versatility and complexity of authentic web communication.
To mark the publication of the report, we are also sharing our new, interactive data visualisations tool, which lets you examine any two discourse events analysed by our research team between 2021 and 2023. You can compare the frequencies and co-occurrences of antisemitic concepts and speech acts by type and by country, look at frequencies of keywords in antisemitic comments, and plot keyword networks.
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Discourse, Antisemitism: Monitoring, Internet, Social Media, Main Topic: Antisemitism, War, Terrorism, Attitudes to Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
Abstract: Common antisemitic visual representations are rooted in Ancient Christianity and the Middle Ages, but we have also witnessed new developments after the Holocaust and the condemnation of fascism. Stereotyping and dehumanization through zoomorphism, demonization, exaggeration of certain physical features anchored in the false presumptions of physiognomy and other visual devices have been weaponized across the centuries for racist and antisemitic agendas. This study undergoes a comparative analysis of two corpuses of antisemitic images from the Romanian press and social media at a distance of one century between them. I analyze the persistency, transformations, and new developments of antisemitic image codes popularized by the Romanian far-right from the start of the 20th century, through to the rise of fascism and the Second World War, up to the present-day social media. This visual qualitative analysis with critical historical insights is carried out on the following corpuses: a) a contemporary subset of 81 memes, digital stickers, and other visuals from 17 Romanian far-right Telegram channels and groups posted over the course of one year (August 2022 – August 2023); and b) 70 archival political cartoons published by 17 far-right ultranationalist newspapers (and one pro-Soviet communist newspaper) between 1911 and 1948. Findings show how persistent certain antisemitic stereotypes have proven across time and different cultural spaces – the hook-nose, zoomorphism, the blood-libel accusations, Judeo-Bolshevism, the satanic representations – and how the visual dimension serves to efficiently implant antisemitic narratives in the collective mind. These (visual) narratives are skillfully recontextualized to fit new (geo-)political realities – the post-Holocaust times, the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine.
Abstract: This article introduces the pilot project “Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online.” The aim of the project is to analyse the frequency, content and linguistic structure of online antisemitism, with the eventual aim of developing AI machine learning that is capable of recognizing explicit and implicit forms of antisemitic hate speech. The initial focus is on comments found on the websites and social media platforms of major media outlets in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The article outlines the project’s multi-step methodological design, which seeks to capture the complexity, diversity and continual development of antisemitism online. The first step is qualitative content analysis. Rather than relying on surveys, here a pre-existing “real-world” data set-namely, threads of online comments responding to media stories judged to be potential triggers for antisemitic speech-is collected and analysed for antisemitic content and linguistic structure by expert coders. The second step is supervised machine learning. Here, models are trained to mimic the decisions of human coders and learn how antisemitic stereotypes are currently reproduced in different web milieus-including implicit forms. The third step is large-scale quantitative analyses in which frequencies and combinations of words and phrases are measured, allowing the exploration of trends from millions of pieces of data.
Abstract: Soon after the outbreak of the pandemic, antisemitism connected to the coronavirus appeared in the world. In our research we analyzed a large Hungarian online text corpus from December 1, 2019, to July 10, 2020 to examine whether coronavirus-related antisemitism was present in the Hungarian online space, and if so, what its content was. We differentiated between two layers of communication: the professionalized layer represented by online articles, and the lay one represented by comments and posts. After providing the conceptual background regarding conspiracy theories and conspiratorial- and coronavirus-related antisemitism, we present the mixed-method approach that we employed. This approach includes quantitative LDA topic models, human annotation, and the qualitative analysis of various discourses. Our research indicates that coronavirus-related antisemitism appeared in the Hungarian online space at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, at this time, until July, it was present almost solely at the lay level. Its content was mainly related to various tropes (conspiracy theories) about Jews. However, additional content was also identified. Based on our results and international examples, we propose a comprehensive typology that proved to be a suitable means of analyzing coronavirus-related antisemitic content.
Abstract: In this paper, we explore antisemitism in contemporary Hungary. After briefly introducing
the different types of antisemitism, we show the results of a quantitative survey carried out
in 2017 on a nationally representative sample. Next, we present the research we conducted
on the articles related to Jews from the far-right site Kuruc.info. Our corpus contained
2,289 articles from the period between February 28, 2016, and March 20, 2019. To identify
latent topics in the text, we employed one of the methods of Natural Language Processing
(NLP), namely topic modeling using the LDA method. We extracted fifteen topics. We found
that racial antisemitism, unmeasurable by survey research, is overtly present in the discourse of Kuruc.info. Moreover, we identified topics that were connected to other types of antisemitism.
Abstract: The purpose of this publication is to provide a complex analysis of antisemitism in the Western
Balkans. In cooperation with a team of researchers, the International Republican Institute
(IRI) conducted online media monitoring to determine the most common narratives related to
antisemitism and the relationship between Western Balkan societies and the local and international
Jewish community. The publication contains seven country case studies analyzing online media
narratives in the light of each country’s specific historical, legal, and societal background. The aim is
to provide information that can be used to assess resilience against antisemitism and hate speech
and recommend solutions for identified policy gaps.
The seven countries covered in case studies are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, North
Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro. Locally based IRI partners were tasked with
monitoring online media spaces in these countries and analyzing the content of selected online news
sources, Facebook sources, and related readers’ comments sections published between January
2019 and May 2020. Furthermore, these partners hand-coded online media content, which allowed
them to assess how widely spread particular types of antisemitism are.
Researchers examined more than 9,000 online media pieces. Although instances of antisemitic
speech in online media did not exceed 4 percent of examined content, the research indicated several
threats that might affect the increase of antisemitism, as well as susceptibility to other forms of
extremism. The urge to assign responsibility for specific historical events and the establishment
of common regional historical memory is the overarching context into which narratives related to
Jews in the Western Balkans are fed. Antisemitic narratives were not substantially different from
narratives seen in other parts of Europe and mainly contained familiar conspiracy theories about
control of world financial markets, as well as modern conspiracies such as those claiming intentional
development of COVID-19. Besides conspiratorial content, violent and vulgar antisemitic language
was common. What seems to be specific to the Western Balkan region is the use of antisemitism
(and often the use of a certain form of philosemitism) as a tool to sow or intensify regional conflicts.
Holocaust remembrance was often used as a pretext for criticism of crimes of one ethnic group
against another, and Holocaust crimes were used in many online media pieces as a comparison for
crimes committed during the 1990s.
Narratives about wars of Yugoslav succession often link those conflicts with the events of World War
II. As there is no common regional historical memory of the succession wars, the interpretation of
events around World War II is also affected. Purposeful misinterpretation or utilization of historical
events in populist narratives represents a threat to peaceful democratic transition in the region. This
issue is even more serious in relation to insufficient attention to Jewish legacy and antisemitism in
areas such as education or the preservation of historical sites.
Although the research didn’t find an abundance of antisemitic statements in examined sources, it
did confirm the use of antisemitism in local politics and the utilization of international antisemitic
narratives as a tool for amplifying other political narratives. Limitations in legal and law enforcement
frameworks and the accessibility of extremist literature could contribute to the rapid increase of
antisemitism. Public engagement of local Jewish communities is essential for achieving policies
protecting the rights of minorities and cultivating public debate
Abstract: This dissertation is concerned with present-day representations of Jews, with a focus on mainstream media. Research objectives are two-fold: first, to examine the ways Jews are constructed as Other in (1) traditional, offline mainstream media, (2) online environments, specifically in (a) comment fields under news content, and (b) SNS, and (3) offline group discussions with young people; second, to explore the relationship between the consumption of news and information through different channels and attitudes towards Jews in adolescents. This research builds on Social Identity Theory and Social Representations Theory, and insights from the literature on media representations of ethnic minorities, antisemitism, and hate speech. It employs a multi-method approach, including quantitative and qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis, text mining, and survey methods. The research questions are addressed in five studies: (1) a longitudinal (2006-2016), quantitative content analysis of the television news coverage of the Jewish minority in Belgium; (2) a semantic network analysis of the word "jew" in online reader comments under news content shared on the Facebook page of a leading Flemish news outlet; (3) a qualitative content analysis and co-occurrence network analysis of Instagram posts annotated with the hashtags #jew, #jewish, and #jews; (4) a cross-sectional survey study into the relationship between news consumption through different channels and attitudes towards Jews in adolescents; (5) a focus group study into perceptions and representations of Jews among non-Jewish youth. Findings point to substantial differences in representations of Jews between news media discourse on the one hand, and the "general public" on the other. Furthermore, attitudes towards Jews in adolescents are predicted by education and religious affiliation, rather than news consumption.
Topics: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Internet, Israel Criticism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Social Media, Language, Linguistics, Newspapers, Magazines and Periodicals
Abstract: The 3-year pilot project presented here aims at analyzing antisemitic hate speech and imagery on mainstream news websites and social media platforms in different European contexts. Current forms of antisemitism will be examined in various ways by three international research teams from Germany, France, and the UK.
First, the datasets will be studied in detail (qualitative analysis based on pragmalinguistic, image analytical and historical approaches), taking into account explicit as well as implicit forms of communication (TU Berlin).
The resulting annotated datasets will provide training, validation, and test data for supervised machine learning techniques (King’s College London).
Eventually, all studied phenomena will be measured over time through statistical/quantitative analysis (TU Berlin and King’s College London).
The project stands in contrast to previous quantitative research on antisemitism online due to a) its awareness of verbal and visual complexity in the respective cultural and situational contexts, and b) its detailed, multimodal approach. Thus, it will provide the most accurate picture yet of the full extent of Jew-hatred on the interactive web.
The focus of the pilot project will be on German, English and French websites and their respective social media platforms. After the initial three year period, the focus will broaden out to investigate other European language communities.
The project will make a major contribution to the study of viral hate in different cultural contexts. Moreover, the researchers will engage in an ongoing dialogue not only with academia, but also with political, media and pedagogical institutions. An additional output will be an open source tool that will help to identify the full extent of antisemitism in various web milieus.
The half-yearly discourse reports share central insights of the ongoing research outcomes of the project "Decoding Antisemitism" and review unfolding trends.
The second discourse report presents the definitional basis of our analyses and for the first time provides comprehensive insights into our corpus analyses relating to Great Britain, France and Germany.
Abstract: The 3-year pilot project presented here aims at analyzing antisemitic hate speech and imagery on mainstream news websites and social media platforms in different European contexts. Current forms of antisemitism will be examined in various ways by three international research teams from Germany, France, and the UK.
First, the datasets will be studied in detail (qualitative analysis based on pragmalinguistic, image analytical and historical approaches), taking into account explicit as well as implicit forms of communication (TU Berlin).
The resulting annotated datasets will provide training, validation, and test data for supervised machine learning techniques (King’s College London).
Eventually, all studied phenomena will be measured over time through statistical/quantitative analysis (TU Berlin and King’s College London).
The project stands in contrast to previous quantitative research on antisemitism online due to a) its awareness of verbal and visual complexity in the respective cultural and situational contexts, and b) its detailed, multimodal approach. Thus, it will provide the most accurate picture yet of the full extent of Jew-hatred on the interactive web.
The focus of the pilot project will be on German, English and French websites and their respective social media platforms. After the initial three year period, the focus will broaden out to investigate other European language communities.
The project will make a major contribution to the study of viral hate in different cultural contexts. Moreover, the researchers will engage in an ongoing dialogue not only with academia, but also with political, media and pedagogical institutions. An additional output will be an open source tool that will help to identify the full extent of antisemitism in various web milieus.
The half-yearly discourse reports share central insights of the ongoing research outcomes of the project "Decoding Antisemitism" and review unfolding trends.
The first discourse report provides insight into the methodological approaches and the nature of antisemitic hate speech in selected discourse spaces.
Abstract: This study explores how an extreme far-right alternative media site uses content from professional media to convey uncivil news with an antisemitic message. Analytically, it rests on a critical discourse analysis of 231 news items, originating from established national and international news sources, published on Frihetskamp from 2011–2018. In the study, we explore how news items are recontextualised to portray both overt and covert antisemitic discourses, and we identify four antisemitic representations that are reinforced through the selection and adjustment of news: Jews as powerful, as intolerant and anti-liberal, as exploiters of victimhood, and as inferior. These conspiratorial and exclusionary ideas, also known from historical Nazi propaganda, are thus reproduced by linking them to con-temporary societal and political contexts and the current news agenda. We argue that this kind of recontextualised, uncivil news can be difficult to detect in a digital public sphere.
Abstract: The research studies dedicated to the memory of the Second World War have become a research priority in Europe, particularly after the fall of the communist regime and the re-establishment of the balance of power between the East and the West, in close connection with the social, cultural, and identity-based policies promoted by the European Union. The main objective of such studies is to understand the manner in which the Second World War is remembered, starting from the assumption that “the past is always practiced in the present, not because the past imposes itself, but because subjects in the present fashion the past in the practice of their social identity” (Friedman, 1994 quoted by Kapralski, 2017, 2). Research efforts have been mostly aimed at the study of war “narratives” in general and the Holocaust narrative in particular, the latter becoming the dominant narrative in Europe after the 1990s. Following this line of research, the current study seeks to outline the agenda of commemorative events dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust in Romania, as well as the actors and the narratives they promote, relying on a corpus of 116 online press contents commemorating the Holocaust, as published in the online edition of Adevărul, in the period between March 2015 and March 2020.
