Anti-social media: 10,000 racial slurs a day on Twitter, finds Demos
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A groundbreaking study by the think tank Demos has found that 10,000 tweets containing a racial slur are posted on Twitter every day.
Researchers revealed the most common racial slurs used on the micro-blogging site included: "p**i", "whitey" and "pikey".
However, as many as 70% of tweets using such language were deemed to be using slurs in non-derogatory fashion – often to describe themselves or their own community – sparking debate about the extent to which Twitter truly is a platform for racism and abusive language.
A total of 126,975 English-language tweets from across the globe were analysed over a nine-day period by CASM, Demos’ social media research unit, as part of the project.
Analysis suggests only 1% of tweets used a racial slur in an ideological context within a political statement or in a call to action in the real world. Further analysis found that as few as 500 tweets a day were directed at an individual and appeared on first sight to be abusive.
You are what you twee...
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