IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/21103.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Combating online hate speech: The impact of legislation on Twitter

Author

Listed:
  • Andres, Raphaela
  • Slivko, Olga

Abstract

We analyze the impact of the Network Enforcement Act, the first regulation which aims at restraining hate speech on large social media platforms. Using a difference-in- differences framework, we measure the causal impact of the German law on the prevalence of hateful content on German Twitter. We find evidence of a significant and robust decrease in the intensity and volume of hate speech in tweets tackling sensitive migration-related topics. Importantly, tweets tackling other topics as well as the tweeting style of users are not affected by the regulation, which is in line with its aim. Our results highlight that legislation for combating harmful online content can influence the prevalence of hate speech even in the presence of platform governance mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Andres, Raphaela & Slivko, Olga, 2021. "Combating online hate speech: The impact of legislation on Twitter," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-103, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/248857/1/1785234617.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefano DellaVigna & Eliana La Ferrara, 2015. "Economic and Social Impacts of the Media," NBER Working Papers 21360, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Yi Liu & Pinar Yildirim & Z. John Zhang, 2021. "Social Media, Content Moderation, and Technology," Papers 2101.04618, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2021.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jiménez Durán, Rafael & Muller, Karsten & Schwarz, Carlo, 2024. "The Effect of Content Moderation on Online and Offline Hate: Evidence from Germany’s NetzDG," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 701, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    2. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, George & Jiménez-Durán, Rafael & McCrosky, Jesse & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2025. "Toxic Content and User Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from a Field Experiment," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 741, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    3. George Beknazar-Yuzbashev & Rafael Jiménez-Durán & Jesse McCrosky & Mateusz Stalinski, 2025. "Toxic Content and User Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from a Field Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 11644, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mayank Aggarwal & Anindya S. Chakrabarti & Chirantan Chatterjee, 2023. "Movies, stigma and choice: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 1019-1039, May.
    2. Stoop, Nik & Verpoorten, Marijke & van der Windt, Peter, 2019. "Artisanal or industrial conflict minerals? Evidence from Eastern Congo," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 660-674.
    3. Brodeur, Abel & Yousaf, Hasin, 2019. "The Economics of Mass Shootings," IZA Discussion Papers 12728, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Chopra, Felix & Haaland, Ingar & Roth, Christopher, 2021. "The Demand for Fact-Checking," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1357, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    5. Legge, Stefan & Schmid, Lukas, 2016. "Media attention and betting markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 304-333.
    6. Anikó Bíró & Ágnes Szabó-Morvai, 2021. "Mass media coverage and vaccination uptake: evidence from the demand for meningococcal vaccinations in Hungary," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(6), pages 887-903, August.
    7. Felix Chopra & Ingar K. Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Do People Value More Informative News?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8026, CESifo.
    8. Stephanie L. Chan, 2021. "The Social Value of Public Information When Not Everyone is Privately Informed," Working Papers 2021-09-18, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    9. Alberto Alesina & Marco Tabellini, 2024. "The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 5-46, March.
    10. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/76npisrda99aop75h6fmi4vduu is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Eliana La Ferrara, 2016. "Mass Media And Social Change: Can We Use Television To Fight Poverty?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 791-827, August.
    12. Lubega, Patrick & Nakakawa, Frances & Narciso, Gaia & Newman, Carol & Kaaya, Archileo N. & Kityo, Cissy & Tumuhimbise, Gaston A., 2021. "Body and mind: Experimental evidence from women living with HIV," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    13. Cagé, Julia & Rueda, Valeria, 2020. "Sex and the mission: the conflicting effects of early Christian missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(3), pages 213-257, September.
    14. Di Gioacchino, Debora & Verashchagina, Alina, 2020. "Mass media and preferences for redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    15. Nocito, Samuel & Sartarelli, Marcello & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2023. "A beam of light: Media, tourism and economic development," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    16. Suziedelyte, Agne, 2021. "Is it only a game? Video games and violence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 105-125.
    17. Leonardo Bursztyn & Ingar K. Haaland & Aakaash Rao & Christopher P. Roth, 2020. "Disguising Prejudice: Popular Rationales as Excuses for Intolerant Expression," NBER Working Papers 27288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Chopra, Felix & Haaland, Ingar & Roth, Christopher, 2022. "Do people demand fact-checked news? Evidence from U.S. Democrats," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    19. Victor Orozco-Olvera & Fuyuan Shen & Lucie Cluver, 2019. "The effectiveness of using entertainment education narratives to promote safer sexual behaviors of youth: A meta-analysis, 1985-2017," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-14, February.
    20. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Weather and children's time allocation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1559-1579, July.
    21. Arezki,Rabah & Belmejdoub,Oussama & Diab,Bilal & Kalla,Samira & Ha Nguyen & Saif,Abdulla Fahed Abdulla Ali & Yotzov,Ivan Victorov, 2022. "From #Hashtags to Legislation : Engagement and Support for Economic Reforms in the GulfCooperation Council Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10090, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social Networks; User-Generated Content; Hate Speech; Policy Evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21103. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.