NaDiRa short study: Racism in social media

Establishing a racism monitoring system starting with Twitter

National Monitoring of Discrimination and Racism (NaDiRa)

Project team:

• Dorian Tsolak
• Simon Kühne
• Stefan Knauff
• Anna Karmann
• Martin Kroh
• Marcel Gemander
• Hendrik Lücking
• Long Nguyen

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Project description:

The project investigated the potential of continuous racism monitoring on the social web using Twitter as an example. The aim was first to record and analyse the discourse on racism on Twitter. Secondly, we investigated how the spread of this discourse changes after political events, for example the death of George Floyd in the USA or the terrorist attack in Hanau. For this, we used over one billion German tweets that have been continuously collected since 2018.

Results:

With our project, we were able to show: Big Data analyses of data from the German social web are technically feasible and can contribute to new insights in racism research.

Racism is a much-received and growing topic in the German-speaking Twitter community. In 2018 to 2019, there were around 2,000 to 3,000 tweets on racism every day; in 2020 to 2021, there were already 3,000 to 4,000. Social and political events strongly promote the online discussion in this context: in June and July 2020, at the peak of the Black Lives Matter protests, there were four times more tweets on the topic of racism than on average. They accounted for up to four percent of the total German-language discussion on Twitter.

Furthermore, the word "racism" on Twitter is more likely to be associated with anti-Muslim racism as well as anti-Semitism than, for example, anti-Asian racism. Both "structural racism" and "everyday racism" are similarly strongly associated with the term "racism". It can therefore be assumed that people are equally likely to talk implicitly about everyday racism or structural racism when they use the word "racism".

Surprising insights:

During the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June and July 2020, one in three tweets on the topic of racism was retweeted - a remarkable value that shows: Twitter users have strongly engaged with racism. This could mean that people who care about the issue form a dense network and share posts intensively with each other. But it could also mean that the German Twitter community as a whole perceived a lot of tweets about racism as important enough to share.

Furthermore, we realised in our research that Twitter data has great potential for regionalised analyses of the social web. Two thirds of the users fill in the profile field 'place of residence'. After initial tests, it is therefore possible to assign a real location to about half of the users. Regional differences in social web content that can be identified in this way thus represent an exciting future research topic. 

Significance for practice:

The project results provide information about which topics are frequently discussed online in connection with racism and how moods in Germany develop on the topic of racism - over time, but also depending on key events. For further research, it is interesting that regionalised analyses of the social web on the topics of racism and racism in the social web are feasible. For example, the extent to which racism also manifests itself regionally on the social web can be investigated. 

Short studies in preparation of the Racism Monitor:

In order to prepare a comprehensive racism monitor, DeZIM called on researchers from the DeZIM research community in 2020 to develop innovative study ideas. These should extend existing research projects, pursue new and innovative approaches or build an infrastructure to research racism. By 2021, more than 120 researchers at the six locations of the DeZIM research community had conducted a total of 34 short studies. These are divided into six thematic priorities:

• Health system
• Education system and labour market
• Institutional racism
• Dealing with experiences of racism
• Participation and the media
• Racist ideologies and attitudes

Funding: Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Third-party funding)