{"id":188339,"date":"2025-06-16T06:50:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T06:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188339\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T06:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T06:50:14","slug":"race-hate-driven-by-social-media-campaigns-displacing-sectarianism-in-northern-ireland-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188339\/","title":{"rendered":"Race hate driven by social media campaigns displacing sectarianism in Northern Ireland \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sophisticated social media campaigns are causing an upsurge in race hate incidents as sectarianism is being \u2018displaced\u2019, an academic has said.<\/p>\n

The latest police figures show racist incidents and incidents of hate against religious minorities have reached record highs.<\/p>\n

At the same time, sectarian crimes in Northern Ireland have dropped dramatically.<\/p>\n

\u200cProfessor Peter Shirlow, the Director at the University of Liverpool\u2019s Institute of Irish Studies told The Irish News that the one form of hate is now being replaced with another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"‘I<\/a>\"Emergency<\/a><\/p>\n

It comes after a week of race riots in Ballymena and Portadown left 64 police officers injured and 24 arrested.<\/p>\n

The latest PSNI statistics show that there were 1,807 race-motivated hate incidents in the north last year – an increase of 454.<\/p>\n

Of these incidents, 1,188 were severe enough to be recorded as crimes – as increase from 839.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, faith\/religion-motivated incidents reached 87 last year – an increase of 10.<\/p>\n

However, the number of incidents of sectarianism recorded by the PSNI fell last year with just 910 recorded, a drop of 181.<\/p>\n

Of those sectarian incidents, 588 met the threshold to be recorded as a crime – the lowest number since records began in 2005.<\/p>\n

Incidents of hate based on sexual orientation also fell by 22 to 362 recorded incidents for the year.<\/p>\n

And incidents of hate against the Trans community dropped slightly from 68 to 63.<\/p>\n

\u200cProf Shirlow said<\/a> since 2005-2006, when the PSNI started gathering such data, sectarianism has fallen by well over 60%.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long-term trend. You get the odd year where it bounces up a bit, but generally the trend is very much downward, especially amongst young people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest decline is amongst people aged 18 to 24. The biggest decline is actually amongst young men who would have been more likely to be sectarian or confronted about their background.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been this big shift that\u2019s taken place in society. You\u2019ve got this younger generation who just aren\u2019t experiencing what my generation experienced during The Troubles. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that this has been displaced into racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prof Shirlow added that there\u2019s been a strong decline in sectarian crime reported by young people.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019ve had at the same time is continual growth in racist-based crime and violence, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a replacement here – one type of violence has now moved into another form. As sectarianism has gone down, racism has gone up. When you look at that data, it\u2019s basically in the same places where you\u2019ve seen a decline in sectarianism that you\u2019ve seen a rise in racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Shirlow blamed sophisticated social media campaigns for the spread of anti-immigrant sentiment and claims that governments are not doing enough to stop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is exactly the same as what you\u2019re getting across Europe. There is now social media<\/a>, a lot of which is sponsored by rogue states like Russia and Iran, investing time and energy in spreading myths about immigrants,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the same stuff they\u2019re looking at in Ballymena, that\u2019s the same stuff they\u2019re looking at in Larne, that\u2019s the same stuff they\u2019re looking at in Dublin and Marseille.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to realise we\u2019re living in a world now where these things are experienced locally, but the social media around racism is now massive. It\u2019s sophisticated, it\u2019s well-funded, and it spreads. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the fundamental problems is that governments everywhere are just not doing enough to challenge these myths, to challenge the stuff that\u2019s being said.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sophisticated social media campaigns are causing an upsurge in race hate incidents as sectarianism is being \u2018displaced\u2019, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,15894,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-188339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-racism","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114691717577894552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}