Does online hate speech ripple into the real world in the form of offline hate crimes? A study scheduled to publish in the next issue of MIS Quarterly sought to answer this question. Its authors say that their results show a strong correlation between increased rates of racially motivated hate crimes and areas that saw significant increases in broadband access.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota and NYU's Stern School of Business, determined that depending on the year in question, every 65 percent increase in broadband in a given American county correlated with an uptick in racially charged hate crimes that ranged from 70 to 270 percent.

"[Our research team] thought that the issue of racial hate crimes is of great importance—the fact that such crimes are reported so often in news says a lot about this," study co-author Jason Chan told Ars. "Over the years, I saw many instances in which the Internet was used and misused for such purposes, and I thought that a link between the two might be present, which sparked the motivation to begin this work."

The correlation appears strongest when an American county has greater levels of segregation and sees more queries for racially charged search terms. However, the study also determined that the growing number of hate crimes appears not to stem from established hate groups actively recruiting members through the Internet, nor through coordinated, multi-person hate crime activities—instead, "lone wolf" activities appear to dominate.

Researchers began by determining the number of broadband providers throughout the United States between 2001 and 2008 (at the time, this meant speeds of 200 Kbps and above). A multimedia-friendly speed level was chosen, as opposed to dial-up access, as a threshold which would contribute to "the likelihood and willingness to consume hate content online." The broadband data was combined with county-level reports of racially charged hate crimes, which constituted 60.4 percent of all reported hate crimes in that period.

From there, a number of additional factors were adjusted for. These included everything from the literal terrain of a region (which might affect both how quickly new broadband options appeared, as well as that region's general racial diversity) to socioeconomic status of the residents to crime-related statistics such as number of police officers and number of overall reported crimes.

Models were also rerun to remove sensitive time periods such as the year-long period following the September 11 attacks or to account for factors such as whether increased broadband access meant increased crime reports. Even after all these were accounted for, the data still produced largely similar trends.

However, one major factor altered the relationship between rising broadband access and rising hate crimes. "Counties that have higher racial tendencies tend to have a higher effect," study co-author Jason Chan said in a phone interview with Ars Technica. Meaning, if a county has more population segregation by race, added broadband correlated with a much higher rate of hate crime. The same was true if a county's Internet users searched for more racially charged phrases online—often with the words "hate" or "jokes" attached. If not, then the impact, while present, was far less significant.

The "lone wolf" factor

The study also examined how increased broadband access contributed to the types of hate crimes committed. We already knew that single perpetrators, as opposed to group attackers, were responsible for over 64 percent of American hate crimes between 2004-2008. After applying hate-group statistics provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the researchers found that recruitment efforts by established hate groups saw "statistically insignificant" changes based on increased broadband rollout.

That left a much stronger correlation between a rise in "lone wolf" hate crime attacks and a corresponding rise in broadband access.

The authors suggest that broadband could simply be reinforcing beliefs that are already present. As the study says, Internet users "are unlikely to seek out online content that is counter to their viewpoints." Chan also told Ars that popular news aggregation services such as Google and Facebook "personalize content towards users' past history, making it more applicable or appropriate for them."

He was careful not to recommend altering how those services deliver tailored news; "it’s probably not productive to use counter-speech techniques," he said. Instead, he recommended "incorporating critical multiple literacies of digital media" at American schools. He added that police forces should consider "big data techniques to search for digital traces on online hate sites" to find likely perpetrators of hate crimes.

The study did warn that more research was necessary to understand how established hate groups may contribute to rising hate crime counts—especially if personal online communication (as opposed to public broadcasting on sites and social media) factored into crimes being committed.

The study was conducted well before the FCC raised its "broadband" definition to a download speed of 25Mbps. While the data used in the study missed out on trends such as video sharing and more prolific social media use, Chan was careful to point out that the data accumulated thus far was not invalidated by being old.

"This is not a question that simply can be answered by looking at the speed of broadband," Chan told Ars. "Things could change based on different steps and policies that we take going forward. For instance, after this paper is launched and officials recognize this issue, they might impose policies to change going forward, so we might see a reduction or stay at a steady rate. But if things go in the way that we’ve shown in this paper, then having increased speed would mean it’s easier to get quick access to such materials online, reaching more people. That would be folding the original trend that we show in this paper, in which hate crimes are growing at a steady rate."