Hate speech against migrants, fuelled by misinformation, flooded social media following an attack in Torre Pacheco, in the Spanish region of Murcia, with an avalanche that materialised in violent clashes in the town.

In the early hours of 9 July, Domingo Tomás, a 68-year-old resident of Torre Pacheco, was assaulted by several young people while out walking, and the local police published a message on Facebook on the same day informing of the arrest of two young people involved in the attack.

A day later, on Thursday, 10 July, the only detail that emerged about the incident was that one of the attackers might be of North African origin.

That same morning, the first rumours about the event began to go viral: an old video of another assault and an image with the alleged identity of the perpetrators, falsehoods that spread rapidly on social media, shaping the narrative in the first 72 hours since the attack became public.

An analysis of posts on social media platform X shows that fact-checking managed to limit the spread of these rumours.

However, this effort faces the very nature of social networks such as X, whose algorithms reward controversial topics, as Cristiane Miranda, co-founder of the ‘Agarrados à Net’ project, recently explained to Lusa: ‘the algorithm tends to favour what is controversial, divisive and shocking’.

‘The algorithm favours poor quality content, to the detriment of informative, entertaining or educational content of high quality,’ she said.

According to a report by the Spanish Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe), this false content served to reinforce negative stereotypes, dehumanise groups and create a climate of fear and insecurity in the municipality in question.

The Spanish news agency reports that, in this case, misinformation acted as a catalyst for hate speech, not least because, the day after the attack, the first calls to ‘hunt’ immigrants in the locality appeared online.

During the first 72 hours, hate messages reached an average of 57 reposts per message, compared to 32 for the others.

Despite this, the increased relevance of the event later contributed to a decrease in hate messages (39 reposts per message), but racist statements directed mainly at people from North Africa increased.

An analysis of the words most used in messages posted on X during the clashes reveals that ‘immigrants’ is the most repeated word in hate speech messages on the social network and is used negatively seven out of ten times.

The term ‘violence’ is also mentioned in 65% of hate messages, with the words ‘hunt’, “sticks” or ‘beating’ present in more than half of the discriminatory statements.

The analysis reveals that hate messages posted on social network X about the events in Torre Pacheco use dehumanising language, attribute individual behaviour to the collective and incite violence.

The European Digital Media Observatory's (EDMO) monitoring for the month of July revealed that Portugal contributed to the increase in misinformation about immigration, with the topic reaching a record high since the observatory began monitoring.

According to the EDMO, Portugal contributed to the increase in misinformation about immigration, highlighting the false narrative that immigrants have priority over Portuguese citizens in school enrolment.

The organisation also notes that the events in Torre Pacheco led to widespread misinformation across Europe, inciting violence and racism.