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Geomapping Racism With Twitter
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes that in the age of the quantified self, biases are just one more thing that can be measured, analyzed, and publicized. The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, a group of geography academics took advantage of the fact that many tweets are geocoded to search Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned 'Obama,' 're-elected,' or 'won,' sorting the tweets according to the state they were sent from and comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period. Their findings? Alabama and Mississippi have the highest measures followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee forming a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Beyond that cluster North Dakota and Utah both had relatively high scores (3.5 each), as did Missouri, Oregon, and Minnesota. 'These findings support the idea that there are some fairly strong clustering of hate tweets centered in southeastern U.S. which has a much higher rate than the national average,' writes Matthew Zook. 'But lest anyone elsewhere become too complacent, the unfortunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space.'"
Except that there was no hate in my post. I was just typing random words.
It was you who interpreted hatred. Who wanted to see hatred when none was there.
I'm from a mixed race family (that's "mulatto") and I'm mocking those who insist words can only convey one possible sentiment, as well as those who use simplistic algorithms to gauge that sentiment.
You know what's more effective than, "Waa don't call me a nigger!"
"Yes, I am a nigger. Get used to it."
Like dear Quentin Crisp explained: tolerance only comes when you've worn people down into accepting that you are what you are.
These days, "Wow, I really disagree with Obama's policy on taxation" = racism.
Focusing on the more substantive aspects of racism denies us whites of our "fair share" of victimhood.