Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests
In this August 2018 New York Times feature, Amanda Taub and Max Fisher report on University of Warwick research examining every recorded anti-refugee attack in Germany over a two-year span. The researchers found that towns where per-person Facebook use ran unusually high also saw markedly more attacks on refugees — a correlation that held across community types, including otherwise tolerant towns like Altena, and that weakened during local internet outages. Taub and Fisher pair the data with on-the-ground reporting on how the platform's ranking of emotionally charged posts may distort a community's sense of local opinion. The study was not peer reviewed at publication, and the article presents the pattern as an association between heavy platform use and offline violence, not a proven single cause. TechKids Foundation includes it as a key data-driven entry in Fisher's platform-harms series.
The University of Warwick study covered in the article examined all 3,335 recorded anti-refugee attacks in Germany over a two-year period.
Per the study as reported, wherever per-person Facebook use rose one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent.
The researchers estimated the pattern they associated with elevated Facebook use accounted for roughly one-tenth of anti-refugee violence nationwide.
Taub, Amanda, and Max Fisher. "Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests." The New York Times, August 21, 2018. Syndicated via New York Times News Service (as "In Germany, Facebook Use Fuels Attacks on Refugees"): https://www.wral.com/17785391/