A new science: Using physics to understand hate groups on the internet Premium

In a new paper, researchers have modelled how people aggregate and disaggregate in online communities using equations used to describe the flow of turbulent fluids. They also found that a novel form of equations – one that takes into account shock waves – could account for the dynamics of online hate communities.

Neil Johnson is a professor of physics at the George Washington University, Washington D.C., who was trained in many-body physics. Many-body physicists focus not on the individual parts of an object or a system but on properties that emerge when these parts interact with each other.

For example, a many-body physicist would be interested in what happens to a group of water molecules when water changes to ice, rather than studying an individual water molecule in great detail. 

In the 1990s, Dr. Johnson’s interests took a peculiar turn. “As theory in physics got ahead of experiments,” he told The Hindu, “we decided to look at data in other areas: traffic, financial markets, etc.” He was in effect entering the realm of social physics, or the physics of social systems.

Since then, to quote a 2019 editorial in Scientific Reports, methods of physics have been applied to “traffic, crime, epidemic processes, vaccination, cooperation, climate inaction … antibiotic overuse and moral behavior, to name a few.”

Dr. Johnson’s recent study has added another flower to this bouquet: online hate communities. In a recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, he and his colleagues modelled the dynamics of how online hate communities form and develop, with mathematical equations used to describe the behaviour of shock waves in fluids.

“So the idea that ‘the online world is turbulent’ – we’ve proved it is much more than an analogy,” he said.

Physics magazine called his team’s work a “new science”.