The Geography Of Hate: Geotagged Hateful Tweets In The United States - Hate Map

The Geography of Hate is part of a larger project by Dr. Monica Stephens of Humboldt State University (HSU) identifying the geographic origins of online hate speech. Undergraduate students Amelia Egle, Matthew Eiben and Miles Ross, worked to produce the data and this map as part of Dr. Stephens' Advanced Cartography course at Humboldt State University.

The data behind this map is based on every geocoded tweet in the United States from June 2012 - April 2013 containing one of the 'hate words'. This equated to over 150,000 tweets and was drawn from the DOLLY project based at the University of Kentucky. Because algorithmic sentiment analysis would automatically classify any tweet containing 'hate words' as "negative," this project relied upon the HSU students to read the entirety of tweet and classify it as positive, neutral or negative based on a predefined rubric. Only those tweets that were identified by human readers as negative were used in this analysis.

To produce the map all tweets containing each 'hate word' were aggregated to the county level and normalized by the total twitter traffic in each county. Counties were reduced to their centroids and assigned a weight derived from this normalization process. This was used to generate a heat map that demonstrates the variability in the frequency of hateful tweets relative to all tweets over space. Where there is a larger proportion of negative tweets referencing a particular 'hate word' the region appears red on the map, where the proportion is moderate, the word was used less (although still more than the national average) and appears a pale blue on the map. Areas without shading indicate places that have a lower proportion of negative tweets relative to the national average.

The numbers that appear in the map during a mouse hover indicate the total number of hateful tweets and number of unique users sending them in each county.

Read more about the research and methods behind this project at www.FloatingSheep.org.

In other news, water is wet.

We live along the underground railroad. While I'm not pleased with the results, it does make sense. It had to be somewhere. ...

If you look at the map, it seems there are many areas in the same boat.

Do they have a list of the "hate" words.

Did I miss something? The link is a map about most homophobic areas, not racist. It also shows about the same among the majority of the country.

Did I miss something? The link is a map about most homophobic areas, not racist. It also shows about the same among the majority of the country.

 

Can click on different tabs and it shows searches for various keywords.

This is a research project based on tweets? So therefore people who tweet are representative of the people of their overall geographic location?

 

Completely useless piece of trash. Young folk need to get off their computers and do real research.

This is a research project based on tweets? So therefore people who tweet are representative of the people of their overall geographic location?

 

Completely useless piece of trash. Young folk need to get off their computers and do real research.

 

Maybe so. But I'm going to bet that if I did face-to-face interviews with folks on the ground in their neighborhoods that I'd get similar results. I love wholeheartedly where I grew up, but I'm never going to be that guy to ignore the warts. I've picked at lots of those warts over the years.

 

If you truly love where you live, you'll not soft-pedal the realities of that place. You'll be honest.

Maybe so. But I'm going to bet that if I did face-to-face interviews with folks on the ground in their neighborhoods that I'd get similar results. I love wholeheartedly where I grew up, but I'm never going to be that guy to ignore the warts. I've picked at lots of those warts over the years.

 

If you truly love where you live, you'll not soft-pedal the realities of that place. You'll be honest.

 

I'll go one further. I'd wager that the incidence of racism, homophobia and the like is even higher among those who do not use Twitter or its equivalent. Nothing scientific - just a hunch.

Serious question: What is the definition of "racism" or "homophobia"?

I'll go one further. I'd wager that the incidence of racism, homophobia and the like is even higher among those who do not use Twitter or its equivalent. Nothing scientific - just a hunch.

 

No offense to you or Jim but this is always my favorite comment from other white people. Put down the area you grew up in or live and preach about other people's faults

No offense to you or Jim but this is always my favorite comment from other white people. Put down the area you grew up in or live and preach about other people's faults

 

Perhaps you misread. It's just my belief - scientifically unsubstantiated - that as a rule, folks without technology tend to be older, more set in their ways, and less enlightened.

 

I guess I'm prejudiced after all!

The map shows the frequency of words tagged to be either homophobic or racist...however, it does not show WHO is using these words. So, if two gays are having a joking exchange and call themselves homo's (as I know some do), and/or two blacks are calling each other the n-word, as we know they do, how does this equate to racism or homophobia?....it doesn't. And....the frequency is just as much an indicator of population density.

MUCH different view when you zoom in closer on the map some...no where near as wide spread as the original zoomed out map makes it look.