A new map created by geography experts at Floating Sheep aims to pinpoint what areas around the country see the highest concentration of derogatory language on Twitter. Researchers tracked tweets containing racist and homophobic terms, including slurs against Latinos.
The map tracks tweets around United States in degrees from “some hate” to “most hate” against Latinos based on what derogatory terms are used.
According to NBC Latino, the academics tracked geotagged tweets sent between June 2012 and April 2013. Students read and identified them, determining whether certain racial slurs were used positively, negatively or neutrally. They found 150,000 to be negative.
Texas saw the highest concentration of negatively used racial slurs against Latinos.
“. . . Areas with significant concentrations aren’t necessarily that close to the border, and neither do other border states who feature prominently in debates about immigration contain significant concentrations,” a blog post written by the authors of the study said.
According to their research, the concentration of slurs used were “quite depressingly” found in pockets all over the country.
Slurs were found to be more commonly used in rural areas, which was attributed to differing social practices regarding how residents use social media and differing demographics.
“They show the significant persistence of hatred in the United States and the ways that the open platforms of social media have been adopted and appropriated to allow for these ideas to be propagated,” researchers said.
