Schutte Sebastian, Karell Daniel, Barrett Ryan
Peace and Conflict Dynamics, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Hausmanns Gate 3, Oslo 0186, Norway.
Department of Sociology, Yale University, 493 College Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2025 May 13;4(5):pgaf149. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf149. eCollection 2025 May.
How does online speech affect offline attacks? While a growing literature has examined this link in right-wing violence in the West, much less is known about its importance in the religiously divided societies of the Global South. Furthermore, existing research has overwhelmingly focused on negative externalities of social media, while paying comparatively little attention to their conciliatory effects. We advance the scholarship in both of these areas by analyzing 22.4 million posts from Koo, an Indian social media network popular among India's Hindu nationalists. We combine these data with information on attacks on religious minorities in India from 2020 through 2022. We find that the frequency of hashtags with a Hindu-chauvinist connotation are associated with increased attacks on Muslims and Christians. We also find that the frequency of hashtags alluding to the overcoming of religious divisions is associated with fewer attacks. These results survive a battery of robustness checks and supplemental tests. Additionally, the observed relationships disappear during exogenous Internet outages, consistent with the effect being driven by online speech. Importantly, since the content we study is not overtly aggressive and conveys values rather than factual claims, it does not classify as hate speech, misinformation, or disinformation. This suggests that the scholarly debate on what kinds of online speech influence offline harm has to be broadened and that censorship and fact-checking can fall short of addressing online speech's negative consequences in religiously divided societies.
网络言论如何影响线下攻击行为？虽然越来越多的文献探讨了西方右翼暴力中这种联系，但对于其在全球南方宗教分裂社会中的重要性却知之甚少。此外，现有研究绝大多数都聚焦于社交媒体的负面外部效应，而相对较少关注其调解作用。我们通过分析印度社交媒体平台Koo上2240万条帖子推进了这两个领域的学术研究，Koo在印度的印度教民族主义者中颇受欢迎。我们将这些数据与2020年至2022年印度针对宗教少数群体的攻击信息相结合。我们发现，带有印度教沙文主义内涵的标签出现频率与针对穆斯林和基督徒的攻击增加有关。我们还发现，暗示克服宗教分裂的标签出现频率与攻击减少有关。这些结果在一系列稳健性检验和补充测试中都成立。此外，在外部互联网中断期间，观察到的关系消失了，这与该效应是由网络言论驱动的一致。重要的是，由于我们研究的内容并非公然具有攻击性，且传达的是价值观而非事实性主张，因此它不属于仇恨言论、错误信息或虚假信息。这表明，关于何种网络言论会影响线下伤害的学术辩论必须扩大，而且审查和事实核查可能不足以应对宗教分裂社会中网络言论的负面后果。
