William R. Hobbs

William R. Hobbs is the Lois and Mel Tukman Assistant Professor of psychology at Cornell University, where his research examines politics and health, the social spillover effects of government actions, and how groups adapt to sudden change. With co-author Nazita Lajevardi he led a study of 'target substitution' in online hate, analysing discussions on the mainstream platform Reddit alongside the fringe platforms 4chan and Gab, combined with hate-incident data from the FBI, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Published in the journal Political Behavior, the work found that after the 2017 Unite the Right rally, far-right users shifted from anti-Muslim toward antisemitic rhetoric, with the same individuals targeting different religious minorities both online and offline. The study is cited in discussions of how hate movements that organise partly on Reddit redirect their targets over time, and of the relationship between online rhetoric and offline incidents.