A new research report maps antisemitic expressions online in Dutch. The research, conducted by the Utrecht Data School on behalf of CJO and CIDI, is the first structural exploration of the form and extent to which antisemitism is expressed online in Dutch.
Online antisemitism is a cross-border problem. It is not clear exactly how many online antisemitic incidents and expressions occur. It is clear that it cannot be kept up to date manually – even if one limits oneself only to Dutch (language) online antisemitism.
The report analyzes cases of antisemitism from the calendar year 2020 across a number of social media platforms, and a selection of websites and blogs. This is a first application of a specially developed method to recognize antisemitic expressions, and is therefore a valuable first measurement.
To reasonably estimate the problem, methods and algorithms had to be developed. Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, Reddit, a number of Dutch-language Facebook pages and 5,667 Dutch websites were searched for antisemitic statements using search engines. In total, more than 1,800,000 messages were noticed. These were further (automatically) analyzed for actual antisemitic content using carefully ‘trained’ algorithms. Of these, about 200,000 were classified as antisemitic.
Only antisemitic texts could be examined. The available technology is not yet suitable for the analysis of images, sound fragments or videos . “Although a lot of online antisemitism takes this form, unfortunately antisemitic memes have not been researched,” explains CIDI director Luden.
The findings point to a major, structural problem with online antisemitism. Much hatred against Jews was found on almost every platform, even on more strictly moderated platforms like Twitter. However, there is a visible difference with platforms where no effective moderation takes place.
Particularly on Telegram and YouTube, a relatively large amount of antisemitism has been reported. The expressions are often more overt and more extreme antisemitic. About 25% of all Dutch-language comments about Jews on YouTube turn out to be antisemitic in nature (unfortunately, the films themselves were not examined). On Telegram, it’s 36%, and over two in three of these comments are explicitly antisemitic.
The research was realized with a subsidy from the Ministry of Justice and Security. Advice on the follow-up to this research has been entrusted to the National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism (NCAB).
