Which States Sent The Most Racist Post-Election Tweets?

Submitted by Cheston Catalano

The reaction in some quarters to the reelection of Barack Obama wasn’t pretty.

Floating Sheep, a group of technologically minded geographers, has attempted to determine just where the racism is coming from. First, on the day after the Election, they searched for Tweets containing “monkey” or “nigger,” and “Obama” or “reelected” or “won,” and isolated the ones that were geotagged with a location. Then they created a formula to determine how high the state-level proportion of hate Tweets to regular Tweets was compared to the national level. The result: the above map. The greener the state, the bigger its share of racist Tweets.

Sorry, Southern states. Once again, objective data throws shade your way.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.