"Developing a Science to Combat Toxic Online Spaces"
Researchers at George Washington University have developed a theory based on nonlinear fluid dynamics that describes the formation of online communities supporting "anti-X" hate. The theory not only explains how harmful online activity develops but also gives hints on how this development might be slowed or even prevented by adjusting what the researchers call the online collective chemistry. The researchers show a remarkable agreement between their model's predictions and a huge dataset that they have been collecting since 2014, covering platforms ranging from Facebook to the Russian platform VK.