Study: Racially charged hate crimes go up as broadband expands

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," said study co-author Jason Chan. "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.