The Geography of Hate. Be careful what you tweet, you twit!

Here's another one of those Twitter maps that's interesting.  The first time I became aware of this socio-mapping was during the last presidential election when Twitter followed tweets across the country and mapped in real time conversations, pro and con each candidate, as the election progressed.

This map, created by geography students at Humboldt State University in California, looks at more than 150,000 geocoded tweets (tweets that say where the user is located) between June 2012 and April 2013, sorting for those that contained a racist, homophobic or anti-disability word. The researchers then decided whether or not the tweet was using the word in a hateful way.

Of course, as so often happens with these type things, the survey is slanted to support a preconceived view.  You'll notice that, in the student's erstwhile effort to uncover hate in American, they have conveniently omitted a search for words of reverse discrimination such as, whitey or cracker or honky.  It figures.  I could write a tome on how the creation of the blues and jazz has been handed over to the blacks, but that's another story.

Here's The Link To The Interactive Map,  it's worth a look.  Scroll over the words at the top for a more detailed search and zoom in to the county level.