Why this report? This social media analysis reveals the specific types of Instagram accounts and themes associated with the use of racist language in the Netherlands. These insights will provide the evidence base for The Digital Us, to help decide where and how participants should intervene in online debates to be effective.
Themes
We identified 1,580 Instagram posts related to themes where we anticipated racist comments. Figures 1-3 below visualise these findings. The most common theme was crime, with 891 posts, followed by discrimination and racism (183 posts), protest (146 posts), Islam (129 posts), and immigration (125 posts). Examining the number of comments these posts received, the order changes. Crime, with 135k10 comments, receives by far the most comments, but Islam (46k), protest (30k), and immigration (26k) attract more comments than posts about discrimination and racism (20k). Although Islam ranks fourth in terms of the number of posts, it receives the second-highest number of comments. Posts about the national election also attract a disproportionately high number of comments. Interactions categorised by theme reveal a similar pattern to that of the comments.
There are fewer posts about politicians with a migration biography.
Actors
To more accurately determine where our interventions can be most effective, we identified accounts where racist comments are most prevalent. We have classified these accounts by actor types to better understand the patterns of Instagram posts, depending on who is posting. Actor types include, for instance, influencers, journalists, or politicians. Figure 5 shows the number of posts sorted by the type of actor. Most Instagram posts linked to the themes we researched are shared by national news organisations (1030 posts). Next are regional news outlets with 174 posts. A likely reason for the high visibility of news outlets is their frequent posting: on average, these accounts post about the identified themes nine times a day. In contrast, politicians typically post just once a day on average. Individual politicians share posts about our relevant themes nearly twice as often (76 posts) compared to political parties (42 posts).
Themes by Actor
Weidentified which themes are discussed by type of actor. This helps to understand the focus of different actors and in turn informs where and on what themes interventions can be directed. Figure 9 below shows the frequency of posts for each theme for the four most prolific actor types: national news, regional news, politicians, and activists.