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Predicting Escalation to Violence using Social Media Posting

Predicting Escalation to Violence using Social Media Posing of an Active Hate Group

Project Team: David Campbell (Statistics, SFU), Ahmed Al-Rawi (Communication, SFU), Candyce kelshall (Criminology, SFU), Maite Taboada (Linguistics, SFU). 

Social Media is a platform used by right-wing extremists to convey their message, recruit individuals, organize protests, and identify other groups who share similar hate rhetoric. This project will examine approximately 2.2 million records to identify how Canadian’s who post in this form construct identity, express hate, and how they visualize violence from threat intimidation to full physical kinetic violence. The research will use linguistics, visual analytics, sentiment analysis and lethal force models to construct a uniquely Canadian perspective. Of particular interest – can these different methodologies identify the specific threat which matures into physical violence?