Racism and homophobia on Twitter are concentrated pretty much all over the United States, according to a new mapping project that tracked racist tweets against geographic data.
The Geography of Hate is a project from California focusing on the geographic centers of hate speech on Twitter. The map is part of the work by Humboldt State University’s Dr. Monica Stephens and students of her Advanced Cartography course.
Using Google Maps, the researchers pulled geocoded tweets from June 2013 to April 2013 with “hate words” in them (150,000) and students classified them as negative according to a rubric, then these “hateful” tweets were used in the analysis for the map.
The resulting map can be seen here in its entirety. Some interesting points:
- Predictably, urban areas had the biggest concentrations of racist, homophobic and anti-disability tweets
- Georgia and Kansas seem to be centers of really racist tweets
- Racist words describing black people were used across the country
- Racist words describing Latinos were concentrated in Texas, Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky
- Racist words describing Asians were more prominent on the East Coast, Kansas, Georgia and Minnesota
- Homophobic tweets were used all over the country, but for Los Angeles
These results are interesting, considering that whites are a minority of Twitter users; as we wrote previously, only 14% of Twitter users are white, compared to 26% black and 19% Latino. However, as we wrote earlier this year, Twitter is also a vehicle for white nationalist groups to spread their message.
To see the map click here.
Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.
