Rapid Sharing of Islamophobic Hate on Facebook: The Case of the Tablighi Jamaat Controversy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about several challenges in addition to the virus itself. The rise of Islamophobic hate speech on social media is one such challenge. As countries were coping with economic collapse due to mass lockdown, hateful people, especially those associated with far-right groups, were targeting and blaming Muslims for the spread of the coronavirus. In India, where intense religious/communal polarization is taking place under the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, one such prominent instance of Islamophobia—the “Tablighi Jamaat Controversy” (TJC)—occurred. This article analyzes Facebook posts by public groups over a 5-month period (March–August 2020) to find the major actors and track their link-sharing behavior. We found that the Pro-BJP groups with a right-wing ideology spread Islamophobic hate speech, while other groups (anti-hate) worked to counter the hate. We also found that the hate disseminators were extremely active (three times faster) in sharing their content as compared with the anti-hate groups. Finally, our research indicated that the links most widely shared by the hate spreaders were mostly misinformation. These results explain the use of the Facebook platform to spread hate and misinformation, demonstrating how BJP’s pro-Hindu ideology and its attitude toward Muslims is directly and indirectly enabling these actors to spew hate against Muslims with no legal consequences.