{"id":93760,"date":"2016-08-15T09:50:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T14:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2016\/08\/15\/twitter-conversations-about-race\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:17:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:17:10","slug":"twitter-conversations-about-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/2016\/08\/15\/twitter-conversations-about-race\/","title":{"rendered":"2. Twitter conversations about race"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In addition to surveying Americans about their experiences with and exposure to race-related content on social media, Pew Research Center conducted a content analysis to examine how race is discussed on Twitter. The Center used the social analytics tool created by Crimson Hexagon<\/a> to analyze the textual content from all publicly available posts on Twitter. The first case study focused on the timeframe of Jan. 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016. (For an in-depth explanation of how Crimson Hexagon\u2019s tool works, see the methodology<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This analysis determined that during those 15 months, there were a total of about 995 million tweets about race posted on Twitter. (A tweet was considered to be \u201cabout race\u201d if it included an explicit reference to blacks, whites or the concept of race in general). That works out to an average of 66 million tweets per month and 2.1 million tweets per day. Indeed, no single day over that time had fewer than 1.5 million tweets mentioning racial issues.<\/p>\n\n

Active discussion of race on Twitter tends to follow large news events \u2013 often occurring the day after, as people reflect and respond to the issue<\/h4>\n\n

The analysis found that most of the largest race-focused conversations on Twitter during this period came the day following a major event \u2013 after people had time to process the event and formulate their reactions. Many of these moments involved incidents in which blacks were the victims of alleged police brutality or the targets of racially-charged violence. At the same time, several of the other largest conversations involved award shows or racial controversies more broadly.<\/p>\n\n

In this context, Twitter was more likely to be used as a place to respond to events and synthesize ideas than as a platform to report details of incidents as they occurred.<\/p>\n\n

For example, during the 15 months studied, the day with the most race-related conversation was June 18, 2015, one day after the mass shooting<\/a> at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. On that day, there were approximately 4.3 million tweets posted about race, more than double the 2.1 million tweets the previous day when the shooting occurred.<\/p>\n\n

Several of the other highpoints followed a similar pattern. The sixth-largest day was Feb. 16, 2016, one day after the 2016 Grammy Awards which featured a provocative performance<\/a> by rapper Kendrick Lamar. The ninth largest was Feb. 29, 2016, one day after the 2016 Oscars<\/a>, which took place amid the #OscarSoWhite backlash.<\/p>\n\n