The Impact of Social Media on Conflict and Forecasting Violence

The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme
was established in April 2024 as a CEPR research initiative to provide a better understanding of the links between conflict, economic growth, and public policies. One of its themes is the link between conflict and hate speech, social media use, media bias, and propaganda. We need to know more about how media has influenced violence,
xenophobia, and recruitment for armed groups. Also, how we can use media sentiment to predict a rise in the risk of violence.

Maria Petrova of the Barcelona School of Economics and Augustin Tapsoba of the Toulouse School of Economics are the theme leaders. They spoke to Tim Phillips about the challenges of researching the impact of media, especially social media, on conflict, and what recent research has discovered.