Extremism on Social Media: Lynching of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana

Abstract

Extremist content on social media platforms has led to tragic acts of violence. A context-aware extremist content framework is the need of the hour to ensure the detection and mitigation of this type of content. This work provides an outline of our recently launched initiative to develop a context-aware framework. We also present the rudimentary results of the lynching of “Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana” to illustrate the impact of online extremist propaganda on social media platforms. Our results indicate that nearly 25 % of the total population included in the gathered data have a negative sentiment toward the lynching of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana, demonstrating how extreme hate-mongering ex-tremist narratives are affecting social media users.