Melanie Eversley

USA TODAY

EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this story listed three organizations which the Southern Poverty Law Center identified as hate groups, or having ties to hate groups. USA TODAY is gathering more information and responses from the organizations. The story now includes comment from two groups denying they practice any form of discrimination.

A study released this week shows that social media engagement by groups labeled as "hate" organizations has been booming in the last two to three years — and the largest shares of activity are focused on anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.

The study titled "Hate on Social Media: A Look at Hate Groups and Their Twitter Presence" was conducted by SafeHome.org, an organization of home security experts that conducts research aimed at making communities safer. The study used data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit based in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate groups nationwide.

Study authors said in the report that they wanted to see what hate groups were doing on Twitter and who is following them.

"We studied these Twitter accounts to understand not just how hateful sentiment has evolved over the years, but also in which states these comments originate," reads a statement at the beginning of the study.

The research showed that hate groups collected more "likes" to tweets and comments in 2016 than in any other year since 2008. From 2014 to 2015, the number of "likes" on hate group tweets and comments tripled, and from 2015 to 2016 they tripled again.

The sentiment in this engagement has largely been focused against immigrants and against Muslims, according to the report.

When SafeHome.org broke down the hate groups by focus, anti-immigrant groups attracted the highest average number of followers, at 17,569. Anti-Muslim groups came in second, attracting 14,680 followers on average. Those were followed by anti-LGBT groups with an average of 7,032 followers, black separatist groups with an average of 5,537 followers, white supremacists with 3,056 and anti-Semitic groups with an average of 1,524 followers.

Anti-Muslim sentiments dominated the largest number of hate group tweets, with 25,807. Those were followed by anti-immigrant tweets, which numbered 13,292 and anti-LGBT tweets, which numbered 10,240.

The line between hate groups and legitimate organizations that are simply espousing a non-hate agenda is not clearly defined and is often hotly debated. One of the organizations listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, and which has a large twitter following of 72,690, is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Bob Dane, the executive director of FAIR, defended the organization, saying in a statement that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has made "baseless charges" against FAIR.

"The SPLC has a long and well-documented history of recklessly labeling points of view with which they disagree as 'hate,'" Dane said. "FAIR promotes a mainstream concept, shared by tens of millions of Americans, that immigration policy must first serve national interests, not political parties or businesses looking for votes and/or so-called cheap labor."

Dane added, "FAIR’s 1.3 million members and supporters include a diverse range of every conceivable race, creed, color and political orientation . . . FAIR has a longstanding and abiding policy of never advocating policies that discriminate for or against anyone based on race, creed, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Equal under the law is the law of FAIR."

ACT for America, another of the organizations described as a hate group, said in a statement e-mailed to USA TODAY that SafeHome.org "pretends to market itself as an objective home security site" but then uses its platform to "engage in smear campaigns against those they disagree with politically."

"As the nation's largest and most influential grassroots national security organization, it doesn't surprise us to find ourselves as one of the primary targets for political smear campaigns such as this," the ACT for America statement read.

In the statement, ACT for America also questioned why certain groups made it onto the list of hate groups, but other organizations did not.

ACT for America also pointed out that it is made of "ordinary patriots from every religion, race, sexual orientation and political affiliation."

"National security is an issue that transcends all barriers," the statement read. "Patriotism is not hatred and we do not concern ourselves with the opinions of those who feel that it is."

SafeHome.org said it found there was a higher concentration of hate groups in Arkansas than in any other state. Arkansas logged 7.39 hate groups for every million residents, according to the study. Mississippi was not far behind, with 6.35, followed by Tennessee, which logged 6.21. Northern states such as South Dakota and Montana logged high numbers, too, with 5.82 and 5.81 respectively, according to the report.

Only Alaska and Hawaii showed no hate groups.

Heidi Beirich, who heads the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which logs hate group data, said she was "not surprised" at the timing of the increases in hate group engagement on social media nor was she surprised by the geography. Beirich said President Trump's campaign promoted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment, with promises to build a wall blocking off Mexico and the recent travel ban targeting Muslims. She also said the SPLC's data shows hate group concentrations in the South, so that did not surprise her either.

The White House could not be reached for comment late Wednesday. In recent days, Trump has been embroiled in issues of ethnicity and race. On Tuesday, he visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. There, he denounced threats against Jewish community centers across the country and said he would do what he could to promote better race relations.

The moves came after the public criticized Trump last year for dragging his feet to denounce supporter David Duke, former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, Trump only did so after repeated requests. His condemnation of the Jewish community center threats came after mounting criticism from political rival Hillary Clinton and others of his failure to say anything about the almost 70 such incidents that have taken place in the last several months.

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