For seven years
Vox
- Italian Rights Observatory has been photographing hate via social media.
The new edition, the seventh of the
Map of Intolerance
, the project conceived by Vox in collaboration with the State University of Milan, the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Sapienza - University of Rome and IT'STIME has been released these days
of the Catholic University of Milan.
The results?
Online hate becomes radicalized, more intense, more polarized.
The role of some traditional mass media in directing the outbreak of "epidemics" of intolerance is evident.
Among the categories most affected, women are still in first place with misogyny reigning supreme, followed by people with disabilities and homosexuals, who have returned, after years, to the center of the crosshairs.
How does it work?
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 - according to 6 groups: women, homosexuals, migrants, people with disabilities, Jews and Muslims - by searching to detect the feeling 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 social networks.
The strong polarization represented by the clear and very significant increase in the percentage of negative tweets compared to the total number of tweets detected.
Which indicates
greater radicalization of hate speech
.
This phenomenon was already recorded in last year's survey, but this year it has definitely exploded.
To date, explained the founders of Vox Marilisa D'Amico and Silvia Brena we are therefore 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 guiding 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 regards to homosexual people, 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 identified by Map No. 7 is a
strong concentration on the rights of the person, be they female, gay or disabled.
What to do?
The need for more and more emerges
to educate in the use of social networks and to rethink the relationships between the mass media, social platforms and users,
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 more frequent bouts of bullying
.
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.
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 survey
. The results
From January to October 2022, 629,151 tweets were extracted of which 583,067 negative (about 93% vs. 7% positive), in 2021, on the other hand, 797,326 tweets were extracted, of which 550,277 negative (about 69% vs. 31% positive).
The tweets were geolocated, resulting in the well-known thermographic maps of Italy.
The more "warm", i.e. close to red, the color of the thermographic map detected, the higher the level of intolerance with respect to a particular dimension in that area.
Areas without thermographic intensities do not indicate the absence of discriminatory tweets, but places that show a lower percentage of negative tweets than the national average.
Going into more detail, a redistribution of the most affected clusters is highlighted.
In 2022, women took first place (43.21%), 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%), homosexuals (7.09%) and migrants (5.61%).
Analyzing the data of the individual clusters, another significant element that emerges is that, as mentioned, in all the clusters the percentage of negative tweets is higher than the percentage of positive tweets (disabled: 98.8% negative vs. 1.2 % positive; homosexuals: 94.1% negative vs. 5.9% positive; Jews: 97.7% negative vs. 2.3% positive; women: 89.9% negative vs. 10.1% positive; Muslims: 99.9% negative vs. 0.1% positive; xenophobia: 79.2% negative vs. 20.8% positive).
The peaks
In general, the highest peaks of hatred occurred:
• Against women, on the occasion of the election of Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister and her choice to use the masculine for her title.
Dramatic, the concomitance of hate peaks with feminicides, as unfortunately the surveys of the Map of Intolerance have highlighted for years.
• Against people with disabilities, in conjunction with a homily by Pope Francis who invited us to consider disability a challenge to build a more inclusive society together.
And following the news of a Veronese taxi driver, who refused to take a disabled person on board.
• With regard to homosexual people, on the occasion of Checco Zalone's monologue at the Sanremo festival, which told an LGBTQ tale, and in general in conjunction with homophobic attacks.
• Against migrants, on the occasion of the landings and the speeches of Pope Francis marked by acceptance and inclusion.
• Against Jews, on the occasion of Remembrance Day and whenever there are attacks against Jews of an anti-Semitic nature.
• Against Muslims, on the occasion of the sentence for the attack in Paris on the Bataclan and the killing in Syria by the Americans of two ISIS leaders.
The Geography of Hate Tweets
The highest concentrations of hateful and discriminatory speech were:
Anti-Semitism: Northern Italy and Lazio.
Islamophobia: Piedmont, North East and Emilia.
Misogyny: Center North, Center and Center South. In particular, Bologna, Terni, Rome, Caserta.
Homophobia: All of the North and especially in the Verona area, Calabria.
Xenophobia: North East and upper Lazio, with a strong concentration in Rome.
Puglia.
Disability: North West, Emilia and Tuscany.
