Report: Someone sends out a potentially racist tweet every 9 seconds
According to a recent study by British think tank Demos, every 9 seconds someone sends out a tweet that could be potentially racist.
That accounts to about 10,000 potentially racist tweets a day.
[Demos] used a filter to analyze 126,975 English-language tweets and then estimated that one in every 15,000 tweets contained a “racist or ethnic slur.” Of those, anywhere between 47.5 percent and 70 percent were “non-derogatory” or used to “express in-group solidarity.” (Cutting out the term “white boy” reduced the total number of racially insensitive tweets in half).
That still leaves the tricky question of how many tweets would be considered, by most people, as racist.
The compilation of racist, religious and ethnic slurs tend to be used in a non-derogatory way on the platform.
The study found that one in 55,000 tweets was indicative of racism and prejudice, including up to 10 percent of the tweets that were considered “casual” racial slurs. An estimated 100 tweets per day threatened violence.
Are the findings shocking?
Should racial slurs be blocked from social media? Or does it come with the territory?
Sound off below!
