Thread by @marcowenjones

🧵🚨New analysis showing ALL tweets mentioning both "Muslim" & "UK" with over 500 retweets since 29 Jul. Graph shows which accounts got most impressions over time. Red/pink dots show anti-Muslim &/or anti-immigrant tweets, brown=neutral, green=tweets defending Muslims #UKRiots

2/ I grouped the tweets into the following three categories, 'anti', 'in defense of', and 'neutral'. Sadly the impressions gained by the number of 'anti' tweets was over 155 million (65%) while those 'in defense of' around 31 million. Neutral tweets were about 50 million.

3/ Parsing them finer we see that that the majority of the tweets were anti-Muslim, with half as many being both anti immigrant and both anti-Muslim. Some were solely anti-immigrant. #UKRiots

4/ This distinction is interesting because some outlets, such as the New York Times article, have characterised the riots as 'anti-immigrant', while on X, much of the most shared content is anti-Muslim.

5/ Some of the most widely seen anti-immigrant and/or anti-Muslim accounts include @radiogenoa @goldingbf @tpointuk @jimfergusonuk @ashleasimonbf @europeinvasionn @cobratate . Many of these names are familiar, & range from politicians like Ashlea Simon, to misogynist Andrew Tate

6/ An interesting thing to note about the graph (and I don't think it is a data collection limitation) - but on the 3rd August there seems to be marked increase in the number of anti-Muslim & anti-Immigrant tweets, with right wing student group @TPointUK being notably active.

7/ Be curious to see if this date correlates with any notable uptick in violence- (it does seem the 3rd August was when riots spread to even more cities and towns). Of course not clear which came first, the hate speech or the violence, or if they're just mutually reproductive

8/ A recent YouGov poll showed 67% of British adults thought immigration policy was partly responsible for riots, while 25% thought Muslims. This is a large number, but important to approach with caution.

9/ Indeed, it would be interesting to see how such polling reflects an immediate zeitgeist, and whether the media space, soc media or legacy media, plays a roll in short term changes in public opinion on these issues. If so, good news for the likes of Farage sadly. #FarageRiots

10/ It's not all bad news though, @piersmorgan emerged has one of the most widely viewed accounts rebutting the Islamophobia and xenophobia. @RussInCheshire also deserves a shoutout for countering the hate speech. Keep it up 👑👑

11/ TLDR: The most shared content (retweeted) on X over the past 10 days is hostile to immigrants, and particular Muslims. There are people countering that disinfo, but the hate seems to win on X. The Musk Effect #UkRiots #FarageRiots

**notes: Anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant hate speech was classified using GPT 4o. They included tweets that did the following; attributed fault of violence to Muslims/immigrants (M/I), included disinformation about M/I, pitted 'natives/patriots' against M/I (non exhaustive)