LGBT News Twitter Hate Speech: Map Shows Areas With Most Homophobic Tweets

I think this map shows the reason why I hate living in Virginia. It's not just homophobes, I occasionally hear the n word being thrown around and no one seems to care.

 

How come theres so much on the east coast?

 

From what it says they only used number of tweets. So the large amount on the east coast could simply be due to the higher population there. I think if they did they somehow did % as a frequency of the total number of tweets they may see entirely different results.

 

Rob: There is not a total correspondence between population and hateful tweets, though. Look at Austin, Texas for an example. Big city, but barely the slightest tint on the map.

 

^^^That also goes for Chicago, which barely misses the red.

 

Who'd have thought anywhere in Oregon would be red? Especially Portland area, but I'm glad Eugene/Springfield isn't on there. Maybe people just don't use Twitter.

 

In that case, the chart isn't desperately helpful. It doesn't show that rate of bigotry at all.

 

This makes me feel kind of good about moving to Houston in the fall.

Where I live in Georgia right now is apparently a hotbed of hate (which I can attest to) The map is deep red for everything except disability, where it's a hearty shade of blue. Houston seems pretty clear, though.

I get that that doesn't mean I'll be smothered in love and rainbows when I get there. But tweets might be a sign that there isn't so much overt hatred... maybe.

I have hope!

Oh, and the website says this about how they got the colors:

So it does take into account how many tweets are coming out of the area.

 

According to the legend on the map, the map is normalized according to overall number of tweets in a given area, so it's still useful.

 

There are barely any hateful tweets of any type from where I live, most of them come from the area near the California border.

 

anyone note the stunted penis storm front forming over south-eastern idaho?

 

i mean, the map isn't any sort of earth shattering revelation.

 

I noticed that the only "homophobic word" appearing in either my hometown or college town was queer. I likely think this is because queer is used in these areas not as a slur but actually just to refer to queer identifying people. I don't really think that's a good word to use on a study like this due to its reclaimed status.

 

You have to really zoom in to see where the hate is coming from. The zoomed out map made it look like New York and New England, marriage equality regions, are covered in red, but if you zoom in it breaks apart. The South and the Midwest seem to have the most hate overall.

Part of it is partially a function of population of course. However with that in mind I find the West Coast rather strange. I find it very surprising that even when zoomed out there are clear skies over heavily populated southern California and Arizona. Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, and even San Francisco are all covered by bubbles, yet Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix seem to be the only major cities on the entire map with clear skies. Considering that SoCal was the reason Prop H8 passed (even LA County voted FOR Prop H8), and Arizona is, well, Arizona...

 

Bare in mind, that could be due to higher concentration of twitter users in certain areas.

 

I suppose that could explain it, though still a little strange to figure out as to why people in that region would be so much less likely to use Twitter. LA is the second most populated city in the country after NYC, after all.

Now that I think about it, perhaps the Hispanic population is so high in LA/SoCal/Arizona that they need to check for Spanish-language slurs too in order to get a fair reading on it.


By the way another surprise I noticed was that the three biggest red bubbles when zoomed in were on the Midwestern states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; these are generally thought to be more progressive by Midwest standards, one has marriage equality and another is close to it. I thought perhaps since these states are so polarized between more progressive urban majorities and strong rural minorities of wacko fundies like Michele Bachmann and Steve King, that all the focus on marriage equality there was just stirring up the latter into a homophobic frenzy.

However in Iowa at least the deep red bubbles are not in fundie northwestern Iowa but down in the southeastern part by Iowa City, one of the more liberal parts of the state. Do you have any idea why that might be?

 

The researchers read each tweet they included, so they didn't count any use of slurs that wasn't meant to be hateful. So if "queer" was counted, then it was only uses of queer that were deemed offensive. But of course, what was deemed offensive might not have been meant to be actually offensive.

But I think you're right, Rakkaus, about liberal leanings in an area igniting the bigoted minority. That might also be the deal in Iowa. While political action may indicate a more tolerant and open place overall, there may be some very vocal people who aren't on board with it.

 

Kind of sad to see...

 

Pretty depressing. It's not surprising though, the bible belt is full of racists/homophobes and has generally been intolerant of diversity and anything that doesn't fall in line with Christianity.

Thank god I live in California