Antisemitism on Twitter has been on the rise and is more common now than before, according to a new study.
The peer-reviewed study was done by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) and published by Springer. They said that they found that between the years 2019 and 2020, with one tweet being posted every 20 seconds, over two million of them that were about Jews or Israel were antisemitic.
"Antisemitic content was mostly related to conspiracies of Jewish global dominance, the Middle East conflict and the Holocaust," ISCA said. "We need to do more research to identify sources of antisemitic propaganda. Some of it originates in neo-Nazi groups, anti-Zionist organizations and state-sponsored activities from Iran and other countries."
Despite what Twitter had said in the past about them "cracking down on antisemitism and Holocaust denial," ISCA noted that those kinds of tweets have grown.
"Antisemitic content was mostly related to conspiracies of Jewish global dominance, the Middle East conflict and the Holocaust,"
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA)
How many Tweets are antisemitic?
Tweets about Jews were up 11% in 2020 to 1,531,912, and during that same time period, antisemitic tweets about Jews increased to 14% of all tweets. Tweets about Israel that were rife with antisemitic beliefs were posted almost every five seconds in 2020.
"Social media has become the largest medium for antisemitic narratives, which can radicalize individuals and lead to violence," they said in the study. "Coronavirus has only exacerbated the challenge posed by hatred against Jews and antisemitic conspiracy theories."
Tracking antisemitic content on social media is challenging because of its many forms and assumed attempts to hide the content.