Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
How did they account for multiple racists tweets from one "tweeter"?
One racist sending 100 racist tweets is not the same as 100 different racists each sending one racist tweet each.
Ken
I love data porn and tried to play around with this interactive map. I lived in Minnesota for 23 years and do not recall it to be very racist -- even in the rural areas. So according to that map there are five red dots in Minnesota which are strangely all centered around the twin cities area (the most populated and liberal part of the state). And that data puts Minnesota mentionably close to the top of the list? But if I look at Virginia, I can't even count the number of red dots there's so many and it's not even halfway up the list? What the hell?
Do each of these red dots indicate a single tweet? What are the numbers and tweets that they're looking at here, I feel like the LQ value is not doing the best job of reflecting "racism."
My work here is dung.
The SPLC does in deed execute their honorable mission. Go to http://truthy.indiana.edu/ for other meme propagation and dissemination graphics so you can see that this is one lens to the output of a much larger engine.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"Make Trolls Stay On-Topic"
The data only accounts for racism specifically targetting Obama by the looks of it. So not surprisingly the states that lost the civil war have the most. But it appears to be counting tweets vs accounts. That makes a huge difference because it only takes one mouthy retard to drive your state up the ranks.
With only a couple of days work this isn't bad. But it's not science, it's interest and a proof of concept for doing actual research.
I think it's absolutely horrible and the fact that these states names but not their numbers have found their way into headlines and a Slashdot summary makes me sick. They might have been right to indict the Southern states that we already know have issues along these lines but their map of tweets lists precisely one tweet for Utah and one tweet for North Dakota. The really appalling thing about the North Dakota tweet is that it is geolocated to Minot, a town that has seen an explosive growth in transient workers from states like Oklahoma and Texas in order to meet the demand for workers with oil specialties in the oil fields near there. It's probably a fifty/fifty shot the tweet was from an actual permanent resident of North Dakota.
Basically if a low population states hits the top of your study and the data is that sparse (one tweet!) then I think you should omit that as an outlier and stricken those names from your press release. It's great to recognize these things in your data and to talk about them in your analysis. It's unjust to propagate just their names throughout the news making people think that North Dakota is not only cold and sparsely populated but it's also racist.
Someone in Salt Lake City could have been joking in one tweet and suddenly Utah is one of the most racist states in a Slashdot summary. A transient worker who feels like lost his job in OK and had to use his CDL in Minot, ND because a black man was president could fire off an ignorant tweet and suddenly North Dakota is full of racists.
My work here is dung.
Why is it irrelevant? They claim they're measuring the geolocation of racism, but only pick one very specific type.
Actually, it's not the word, it's the person that makes it racist. As George Carlin ($deity bless his smutty soul) said "Eddie Murphy talks about niggers, but he's not a racist, don't be silly. He's a nigger". Is Carlin a racist for using the word? I kinda doubt that he is. And even if, he's not for using the word.
Words are, by themselves, nothing but just that. Words. Idioms to represent something, in case of a noun, to represent an item, a person or an idea. It's the intention behind the word that makes it racist or not. And that's not depending on the word. If a racist calls someone an Afro-American (or whatever the PC word is right now, sorry if I don't keep up with the bull but I prefer to be correct instead of PC), the intention is to use the word not only to ridicule PCness, but also to use the PC term to deem someone inferior.
It is not the word. It is the person that is racist. And by changing the politically correct term for it, you don't change racism. You just paint the shit in a different color, but it still reeks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not at all.
Language is tricky. You can be what you want to be. My doubts about the nature of your posts has to do with your seeming self-reviling. You describe yourself in terms that don't connote pride, they connote self-loathing, which shouldn't be the case.
Along thru this thread, I've told you that you can use any words that you want; they're protected speech. Your inference, however, is that you seem to despise these things. Being of mixed race, part of the LGBTQ rainbow, these are who you are as an individual. I respect individuals. I don't respect negative labels.
For English, there is no real language police. There is, however, the semantical choices made by English speakers that contextually infer their contexts, and their meanings. Describe yourself in any way you see fit, but don't believe that others want to use the negative inference you've used as well. Indeed, these words are used to subjugate you by labeling you in negative terms. Those negative terms are viable. But they do little good.
That you may be perceived by others negatively is their misfortune. For you to do so, however, validates their negativity and prejudice. Be proud. Pride is a positive quality, and eschews the negative.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
As a person who isn't a kid these days, and is completely unfamiliar with hip internet parlance (i.e. lives in the real world), terms like "faggot" and the n-word (I don't even want to type it) are still highly charged, and loaded with ugly context. I really doubt that most gay people or black people would also find these words fully acceptable (go find one, call them it, then try to tell them that its okay on 4chan so they should relax).
Words do have power. Words shape our understanding and conception of the world. Words with a loaded history of venom and hate still maintain a portion of that long after they stop being completely pejorative. It doesn't even matter what the speaker means, as meaning is created mostly by the perceiver.
Further, your being a bit naive. If someone calls me a "fag", I'm pretty sure they aren't critiquing my fashion sense, they are trying to tie me to a group which (for some stupid reason) they find undesirable. It is an insult which hinged on the idea that homosexuals are bad or dirty. This is the actual content behind the word. The word isn't bad, but the connections it requires to have meaning are.
Unless of course they are asking for a cigarette, or some firewood.
Hell, "fuck" has pretty much become a normal word now, but there still are some connotations lurking in the background which keeps me from ever really wanting to use it (I do, and often, but don't find it a point of pride).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
How is that when people speak their mind it is labeled "racist"? Isn't there a freedom of speech?
Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Calling these idiots racists is an exercise of free speech.
Oh, you wanted us to sit silently while you spew little-minded vitriolic bullshit? Is that how you think free speech works?
I know another term for reverse-racism ... it's "racism". It shouldn't be made different in any way. If people keep doing things to treat any type of racism differently, it will never stop.
When white people hate black people, the people who are harmed the most by it are black people.
When black people hate white people, the people who are harmed the most by it are black people.
In the US there are more white people than black people and the white people have more power. The situation is not symmetric.
For now, the 'specific type' of racism that was measured is still important in a way that the others aren't, even if the others are important also. Soon white people will be a minority, but then black racism still won't be a large threat to white people, it will be asian and hispanic racism, or the absence of it, that affects them primarily.
I agree that racism is a better term than reverse racism. But its BS when people (not necessarily you) bemoan the fact that black racism isn't treated like white racism. Likewise for when people complain of "class warfare" when rich people are criticized for abusing the power that money gives them. (When a poor person thinks that rich people should pay more taxes, and politicians pander to that, it doesn't harm the rich person in anything like the way the poor person is harmed by the self serving actions of the rich person. Getting laid off to increase the quarterly earnings of an already profitable company, for instance, is a lot worse than a multi-millionaire having to pay 20% capital gains tax instead of 15%. The argument is made that higher capital gains taxes would hurt poor people because it discourages investment. This ignores the fact that 'investment' activity is often more parasitic in nature rather than economically constructive. But even supposing the argument is valid, it still illustrates the asymmetry - its the poor person who suffers in both cases. This doesn't imply that rich people are 'worse' than poor people, or that poor people would be any kinder if their roles were reversed. But it does mean that when you're successful, the wealth you acquire gives you more power to affect other people, and you're responsible for what you do with that.)
I consider myself to be racist, and its something I'm not entirely ashamed of. I don't think that cultures are in every sense equivalent, and I don't think that all kinds of intelligence are uniformly distributed across genetic groups. Its BS when black people act like their worst stereotypes then complain of racism when they get criticized for it. But its worse to use even real weaknesses and shortcomings of other people as an excuse to unjustly abuse and exploit them when you have the power to do that. From where I stand, white people who try to draw an equivalence between black and white racism generally don't see anything like the truth about how grievously black people have been fucked over by white people. And I'm not just talking about Jim Crow, that affected many still-living black people. Our entire social and economic order is still to a very large extent built around the values and strengths of non-black people. Its not being 'fair' when you define virtue in terms of your own best advantages then punish others for falling short by that standard.