But how intolerant are we? A lot, unfortunately. We find out from the VII edition of the Map of Intolerance 7.0 commissioned by Vox Osservatorio Italiano sui Rights, which photographs language via social media. The project conceived by Vox – Italian Observatory on Rights, in collaboration with the State University of Milan, the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Sapienza – University of Rome and It’Stime of the Catholic University of Milan.
In its seventh year of survey, the mapping allows the extraction and geolocation of tweets that contain words considered sensitive and aims to identify the areas where intolerance is most widespread, directed towards 6 groups: women, homosexuals, migrants, with disabilities, Jews and Muslims. An attempt is made to detect the sentiment that animates online communities, considered significant for the guarantee of anonymity they often offer and for the interactivity they guarantee.
In 2022 the survey, which covered the January-October period, went through a period of severe turbulence, marked by the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, the political elections, with a change of government, and inflation: this is also the case he year anxieties, fears, difficulties have piled up in people’s daily lives, helping to create an endemic fabric of tension and polarization of conflicts. One figure above all best captures the reality that online hatred represents today and the role of transmission belt that social media play between traditional mass media, politics and some pockets of strong discontent, which find outlet and expression right in the prairies of new media: (continued)
The strong polarization represented by the very significant increase in the percentage of negative tweets compared to the total number of tweets detected. This indicates a greater radicalization of hate speech. This phenomenon was already recorded in last year’s survey, but this year it has definitely exploded. To date, therefore, we are witnessing a verticalization of the phenomenon of online hate, for which the initial diffusivity has given way to a model of increasingly incisive and polarized social dynamics. An increase in the choice of social platforms corresponds to a greater selectivity of messages of exclusion, intolerance and discrimination.
In relation to these aspects, it is useful to underline the role played by traditional mass media in directing and influencing this type of communication and narrative. In this regard, a future broader reflection on the awareness of this role and its social implications is deemed useful and necessary.
Another element that emerged concerns the podium of the targeted categories: women, people with disabilities, homosexuals. With regard to homosexual people, it is worth noting that hatred towards them had gradually diminished over the years, to the point of representing a minimal percentage of the total. Over the years, the same is true for people with disabilities. It therefore appears evident that one of the connotations of online hate revealed by Map No. 7 is a strong concentration on the rights of the person, be they women, gay or disabled. (continued)
In this regard, the need to educate on the use of social networks and to rethink the relationships between the mass media, platforms and users is increasingly emerging, in order to prevent increasingly radical forms of hatred, which can go beyond the boundaries of the online dimension and translate into concrete acts such as feminicides or increasingly frequent bullying attacks.
Going to the data, a preliminary consideration: they should also be read in the light of the two different algorithms used to detect sentiment. There have been various changes this year, including in the “cleaning up” of semantically ambiguous tweets. The results should therefore be more faithful, but are not totally superimposable with previous years.
In any case, trying to make a comparison, a total of 797,326 tweets were collected during the 2021 survey (January-October), of which 550,277 were negative (about 69% vs. 31% positive). On the other hand, in the 2022 survey (January-October period), 629,151 tweets were collected, of which 583,067 were negative (about 93% vs. 7% positive). As already highlighted, fewer semantically centered tweets were detected, but the negative sign is strong and predominant over the total, a clear sign of a radicalization of the phenomenon. (continued)
Women in first place, then the disabled, gays, migrants, Jews and Muslims
In all clusters the percentage of negative tweets is higher than the percentage of positive tweets. Greater radicalization, generalized hatred against women and against human rights, semantic shift in the construction of the language of hate: these are the key factors of the 2022 revelation.
From January to October 2022, 629,151 tweets were extracted of which 583,067 were negative (about 93% vs. 7% positive), in 2021 instead 797,326 tweets were extracted, of which 550,277 negative (about 69% vs. 31% positive) . The clusters most affected: in 2022, women (43.21%) take first place, followed by people with disabilities (33.95%), homosexuals (8.78%), migrants (7.33%), Jews (6.58%) and Muslims (0.15%). Compared to 2021, which saw a different distribution: women (43.70%,), followed by Muslims (19.57%), people with disabilities (16.43%), Jews (7.60%), people homosexuals (7.09%) and migrants (5.61%).
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