Haters Gonna Hate; 'Geography Of Hate' Map Shows Portions Of US With High Levels Of Racist, Homophobic Tweets

Haters gonna hate, especially in certain parts of the U.S. Students from Humboldt State University have created a "Geography of Hate" map that shows portions of the U.S. more prone to sending racist and homophobic comments via Twitter. Using a keyword search of geotagged tweets, the Geography of Hate map was created after the students checked each tweet for a negative, positive, or neutral connotation, ultimately identifying more than 150,000 hateful tweets with this location info. 

The map used red coloring to identify areas of high hate and blue coloring to identify areas of low hate. Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southern states showed particularly strong levels of both racism and homophobia. Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina are just a few of the states guilty of sending out mass amounts of hateful tweets. The Southwest, Pacific Northwest, California and Hawaii are among the states and areas which showed low levels of racism and homophobia via Twitter.

There were also some instances of states showing low racism and high homophobia in their Tweets, as well as vice-versa. Massachusetts and Maine showed low levels of racism, but much higher levels of homophobia with their Tweets. Parts of Washington showed high racism and low homophobia, while parts of Oregon showed high homophobia and low racism.

"Ultimately, some of the slurs included in our analysis might not have particularly revealing spatial distributions. But, unfortunately, 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," said the student researchers.