Although there are challenges and inconsistencies around data and the need for standardisation, they can still be useful resources. All registers are affected by underreporting and coding inconsistencies, and by changes in reporting practices among communities. Definitions are often unclear and inconsistent, even within the same country, which impedes the comparison of data collected by different organisations. The main barrier to the use of these registers is often data quality.
#IMRAN AWAN OFFLINE#
Subsequent research published this year used data collected by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other sources to examine patterns of the online and offline distribution of racist flyers. For instance, a 2016 study of anti-Muslim hate crimes by Imran Awan and Irene Zempi found what they called an “affinity” and “continuity” of anti-Muslim hostility between the virtual and physical worlds.
There have only been a few articles that used data from these non-governmental registers of hate crimes and hate incidents to shed light on offline hate crimes and online behaviour. They include social media posts that incite violence against religious minorities, threatening emails, memes, videos and other materials that are reported to them by community members.Ī motif decorated “Facebook and Radicalisation and Hate” during the Rose Monday procession in Duesseldorf in February (Federico Gambarini via Getty Images) For example, the antisemitism report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Islamophobia Register Australia, and Tell MAMA in the UK (among many others) record hundreds of incidents of hate every year.
Research in this field is largely underdeveloped, even though there is potentially a wealth of information about online incidents of hate recorded by civil society organisations that has not been properly examined. Many incidents blur the line between hate crimes and terrorism, such as the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting in 2018. There is a debate about whether hate crimes and terrorism are “close cousins” or “distant relatives”. They can include displays of aggression, graffiti, instigation of violence via a social media post or threatening posts or leaflets that might not meet the threshold of a crime under some legislations.ĭefinitions and concepts around hate and extremism are often blurry, and the link between the two is just beginning to be explored. Hate incidents are malicious acts that do not meet the threshold for a crime. Hate crimes are broadly defined as any criminal acts committed with a bias or ideological motivation. It includes research and training on hate incidents, hate crimes and violent extremism, data collection of online and offline hate incidents, and developing best practices for removing the barriers to reporting hate crimes in communities.
That is the purpose of the Australia-based Tackling Hate Project.
They occur online and offline, and should be factored into our concept of violent extremism in order to have a fuller, more accurate understanding of what extremism is and how it manifests itself.īut first we need a uniform and coherent definition of what a hate crime is, and a standardised manner in which data is collected. Such behaviours are usually referred to as hate crimes and hate incidents. Instead, we can gain insight by examining other violent behaviour, including acts of aggression, violence against properties and instigation of violence. Part of the answer may lie in looking at extremist behaviours that are not limited to the most extreme end of radicalisation – that is, the engagement in, and support for, terrorism.
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What is the relationship between online and offline extremism? What types of data should be examined in order to understand this relationship? What is the full scope of violent extremist actions? These are all key questions that extremism researchers are trying to answer.
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