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Clout, kicks and clicks: Analysing the surge in anti-migrant harassment and violence in Ireland

Dublin riots in Nov 2023 exposed Ireland's anti-immigration violence, which has since surged, with 61 incidents recorded from May to August 2024.

The Sky News piece on the international input in Irish anti-immigrant Twitter has certainly caught people’s attention, but here’s why you shouldn’t read too much into it. (PS: I’m not over on the hellsite anymore, so realise the reach of this will be crap. Please repost it there if you so wish)

That’s not to say that what happens online doesn’t matters. It clearly does and there’s a lot of dodgy stuff going on online that there’s no oversight over. I discussed this on Drivetime yesterday FYI, from around 1 hour 30: www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

Investigation claims most of users responsible for Twitter posts on recent anti migrant protests in Ireland were American based

An investigation of social media data has claimed that most of the users responsible for Twitter posts on recent anti migrant protests in Ireland were American based, and posts were also amplified by ...

I often think these kinds of analysis can make people complacent about our homegrown domestic extremism problem. It isn’t Americans setting fire to buildings, rioting, beating people to death for being immigrants or intimidating anyone who doesn’t agree with them - it’s Irish people doing that.

When this happens, it will naturally attract more users from outside of Ireland - that’s just kinda the way the internet works. I’d also bet good money that there are bot networks boosting tweets by influential Irish users (something I’ll be looking into in more detail).

That’s not to say there isn’t outside influence - the Irish far-right are v influenced by similar movements internationally in general. Influential figures in the US and UK will jump on Irish stories/propaganda and promote, discuss and amplify them (some more so than others, like Tommy Robinson).

When I took the remaining data and lumped it all into the US (given this is what Twitter says it does), the results looked more like Sky’s -the US accounted for 60%. I’m not 100% sure that this is what happened with Sky’s data, as I’ve never used Talkwalker, but it’s a possibility.

So, not great as regards reliable data. I tried to replicate Sky’s analysis with a different tool and got very different results, with Ireland coming out clearly on top, followed by the UK and then the US. But, only half of my data was coded for a location.

In my experience,geolocation analysis of Twitter data is v unreliable. Firstly,Twitter users can change/choose their location themselves, or mask it using VPNs and other methods. Second, Twitter even says in its help centre that when it cannot resolve a user’s location, it will default it to the US.

The Sky News piece on the international input in Irish anti-immigrant Twitter has certainly caught people’s attention, but here’s why you shouldn’t read too much into it. (PS: I’m not over on the hellsite anymore, so realise the reach of this will be crap. Please repost it there if you so wish)