Antisemitic incidents have shown a sharp rise in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based Jewish civil rights group that has been tracking cases since 1979, found that there were 2,717 incidents in 2021. This represents an increase of 34% over 2020. In Europe, the European Commission found a sevenfold increase in antisemitic postings across French language accounts, and an over thirteenfold increase in antisemitic comments within German channels during the pandemic.
Together with other scholars who study antisemitism, we started to look at how technology and the business model of the social media platforms were driving antisemitism. A 2022 book that we co-edited, “Antisemitism on Social Media,” offers perspectives from the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Israel, India, U.K. and Sweden on how algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube contribute to spreading antisemitism.
