Quantifying The Leadership and Social Media Predictors of Violence and Racism during the January 6th Attack on the Capitol

Protests involving brute force are growing in number and are now viewed as one of the mostly likely sources of collective violence in the U.S.1 Yet our scientific understanding of how violent protests is related to leadership rhetoric and social media communications during protests remains nascent2–6. Here we analyze new data from the U.S. Capitol insurrection to quantify the links between leadership actions, social media communications, and levels of violence and racism during on the day of 1/6/21. Using Granger causality methods to analyze former President Trump’s tweets, #StopTheSteal tweets, rally speeches, and live-action videos, we find that Trump’s tweets and speech predicted rioters’ levels of violence and weapons use. Trump’s tweets also predicted increased levels of the #StopTheSteal tweets, which in turn predict escalations in attacks and beatings, dangerous weapons, and symbols of racism. NLP analyses indicate that a tweet’s sentiment predicts different forms of violence and racism and at different levels. The findings demonstrate how the interplay of authority figure behavior and social media is predictive of shifts from peaceful protest to physical violence.