The role of networks in spreading hate speech on Twitter

The objective of this study is to investigate the role of networks in the distribution of hate speech on Twitter. Using a sample of participants engaging in hate speech on Twitter, we examine the influence of popular users and retweeting in the spread of hate speech. A manually annotated tweet sample is used for this purpose. We divide the sample of hate speech participants into two groups: the core and outer circle. The core refers to users who are frequently followed by other hate speech participants, while the outer circle includes users who engage in hate speech but are not regularly followed by other perpetrators. We programmatically investigate the dynamics of hate speech in this network. Our findings reveal that popular users play a dual role: actively sending hateful tweets on other users' threads and retweeting hateful tweets from outside the network to their followers. However, hate speech only represents a small portion of their overall Twitter activity, as they predominantly share neutral tweets. Consequently, their Twitter feeds remain, on average, primarily neutral.