Social Media and the Normalization of Hate: October 7 Two Years On

Anti-Semitism surged dramatically across all monitored platforms immediately after the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023:

The average level across all platforms reached 8.3 times pre-October 7 levels.
The highest observed increase was on Gab, which saw a 13.4 times spike.
X (Twitter) saw the smallest increase at 5.6 times pre-October 7 levels.
The overall trend has been upward since a temporary dip in late 2024.
Anti-Semitism on BitChute, Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok in 2025 was at levels higher than the immediate post-October 7 peak.

Data Collection and Methodology

The study collected a total of 10,896 items between November 2022 and September 2025.

The collection used a methodology involving 8 hours of monitoring per platform per sample period.
A snowballing strategy accounted for 92% of the data, minimizing the influence of initial search terms and providing an "unfiltered representation" of content.
Every item was archived and categorized by experts into one or more of 27 categories of anti-Semitism, based on the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.

Most Common Anti-Semitic Narratives

The study categorized anti-Semitic content into 27 types and identified the 10 most frequent narratives. The top three most common narratives are:

Rank	Category	Description	Coverage (Percentage of all content)	Total Items
1	Traditional Anti-Semitism	Promoting traditional anti-Semitism, such as blood libel and claims that Jews killed Jesus.	36.2%	3,948
2	World Jewish Conspiracy	Promoting the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy, often rooted in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.	22.9%	2,495
3	Israel/Nazism Comparisons	Describing Israel or Israelis using traditional anti-Semitic words or imagery (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel).	21.9%	2,389

Other highly frequent narratives include promoting the idea of Jews controlling government (15.3%), dehumanizing Jews (9.4%), and denying Jewish self-determination by claiming Israel's existence is racist (8.2%).

Emerging and Violent Narratives

The report highlights two critical emerging trends:

October 7 Denial and Justification: Posts are denying the sexual violence committed by Hamas and are explicitly justifying the attacks, sometimes linking the event to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about 9/11.
Glorification of October 7 and Terrorism: This includes online and offline messages glorifying Hamas, calling to “October 7, do it again,” and justifying “armed resistance” against Israel “from the river to the sea” (a call for destruction). Holocaust glorification, or suggesting it did not go far enough, accounts for 6.9% (746 items) of all content.f

Source: Andre Oboler, Patrick Scolyer-Gray, and Liana Levin, “Social Media and the Normalisation of Hate: October 7 Two Years On,” Online Hate Prevention Institute, (2025).