An Exploratory Study and Prevention Measures of Mob Lynchings: A Case Study of India

Abstract

Mob lynching is violent human behaviour where people punish someone without a legal trial. Lynching ends with a significant injury or death of a person. In the digital era, almost every piece of news, including the incident of mob lynching, is shared on social media. Once a case of mob lynching is shared on social media, it propagates to a wide range of audiences. This study uses quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate mob lynching in India and discuss possible prevention measures through social media using two datasets, one collected from Twitter and another from a fact-checking website. The fact-checked data provides an overview of the cause and effect of mob lynching, while the tweets provide the current discussion and user response. The proposed analysis highlights frequent topics discussed on Twitter, user reactions to those posts, and their relation with historic mob lynching incidents. In the end, a prevention measure is proposed using a user study. The result shows that most tweets are of negative sentiment; tweets are more retweeted than likes. The topic modelling shows the tweets are asking for mob lynching and help. There is partial support for prevention measures, and there is a need for literacy, awareness, and strict law to control mob lynching in future.