Chris Shearer
Contributing Writer
OCEAN CITY — Maryland had the fourth highest occurrence of derogatory language on Twitter, according to a recent study that analyzed over 12 million tweets nationwide.
The study was conducted by ABODO, a startup out of Madison, Wis. that helps people find apartments more easily.
The report, titled “Tolerance in America”, is one of a series ABODO put together called “Best Places to Live.”
Sam Radbil, senior communications manager for ABODO, said that research team put together this study and the series in order to help renters find a city or state that matches their lifestyle. He believes that a person needs to be compatible with their area and that includes the way the area talks about people.
“Some [people] like metro areas and some prefer rural areas. But no matter the location, we feel that before making a decision on where to rent a new apartment, it’s important to understand the language used in that area and the culture of the city, state and neighborhood,” Radbil said. The team at ABODO compiled a database of all tweets that had their location in the United States between June 2014 and December 2015. The tweets were then filtered to find the number of negative slurs for a variety of groups including, black people, Hispanic/Latino people, women, LGBT people, people with disabilities, and overweight people specifically. For some states, the sample size was too small to be statistically significant and they were disregarded.
Maryland had 895 instances of derogatory language per 100,000 tweets. It ranked behind only Louisiana, Nevada and Texas.
Baltimore also came in first place as the city with the highest number of racial slurs on the social media platform against black people at 81 per 100,000, but Maryland as a whole ranked third in the same category with 31.3 per 100,000. Atlanta, Ga. and New Orleans, La. ranked behind Baltimore at 73 and 66, respectively.
“We feel that accurate data helps provide renters with a feel for the area in which they’re searching and/or moving. That’s why we chose to conduct this research and produce a completely data driven and objective report, based on what Twitter users themselves are talking about in specific geographic areas and the language they are using in conversations,” Radbil said of the research.
Additionally, Maryland ranked third in the nation for derogatory language toward women with 650 tweets per 100,000, only behind Louisiana and Texas. Baltimore had 2,323 tweets per 100,000 using such language and ranked fifth. Also, among the data collected were tweets using derogatory language for transgender individuals.
After removing Nevada, which the study deemed to be an outlier due to the pornography industry’s presence in Nevada, Maryland ranked eighth for most tweets using offensive language about transgender people. The study also analyzed tweets that were using more tolerant language toward various groups in order to have a baseline to compare the offensive tweets to.
Oddly, Maryland ranked in both derogatory tweets toward overweight people and also tolerant tweets about overweight people, coming in fifth for both categories.
Notably, the study doesn’t have any filter for humor or sarcasm, it merely counts the number of instances. It’s also important to note that more than 50 percent of Twitter users are under the age of 50, according to a Pew Research Center Study from 2014.
Radbil believes that this study contributes to the general information that renters might want when looking for a place to live.
“Our goal is to help renters find a place that is a good fit for them by providing them with data about the city, states and neighborhoods in which they are searching. We want renters nationwide to know as much as possible about the place that they’re going to call home,” he said.