Within minutes of the Bondi Beach massacre, antisemitic and other conspiratorial content surged across social media, with posts falsely claiming that Jews or Israel staged the attack to advance political aims, blaming victims for their deaths, and spreading Islamophobic or anti-immigration rhetoric. A new article from J-Wire discusses The Online Hate Prevention Institute’s new report on this online response to the attacks. OHPI monitored hundreds of such problematic posts almost immediately after the tragedy, categorising them into various hateful narratives. Dr. Andre Oboler, the institute’s chief executive, highlighted the rapid weaponisation of the tragedy online, emphasising that such hate speech and conspiracy theories emerge before accurate information is available and underlining the need for improved approaches to countering online extremism and hate.

Read the J-Wire article here.

Read OHPI’s new report here.