Summary: Extreme heat and extremely cold temperatures are associated with a marked increase in aggressive behavior online, including hate speech, a new AI-based study has found.
Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Temperatures above or below a feel-good window of 12 to 21 degrees Celsius (54 to 70°F) are linked to a marked increase in aggressive online behavior in the United States, a new study has found.
By analyzing billions of tweets posted on the social media platform Twitter in the United States, researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found that hate speech increased across climate zones, income groups and systems. of belief for temperatures that are too hot or too cold.
This indicates the limits of adaptation to extreme temperatures and sheds light on a still underestimated societal impact of climate change: conflict in the digital sphere with implications for both societal cohesion and mental health.
“By detecting hateful tweets in over four billion tweets from US users with our AI algorithm and combining them with weather data, we found that the absolute number and share of hateful tweets increases outside of a climatic comfort zone: people tend to show more aggressive online behavior when it’s too cold or too hot outside,” says PIK scientist Annika Stechemesser, first author of the study which will be published in The Planetary Health of the Lancet.
“Being the target of hate speech online is a serious threat to people’s mental health. The psychological literature tells us that online hate can worsen mental health problems, especially among young people and marginalized groups,” she adds.
“We find that outside of the 12-21°C (54-70°F) feel-good window, online hate increases by up to 12% for colder temperatures and up to 22% for warmer temperatures in the United States”
The Well-Tempered Tweet: Least hateful tweets between 15 and 18°C (59 and 65°F) in the United States
To arrive at these results, the authors used a machine learning approach to identify approximately 75 million hateful tweets in English in a dataset consisting of more than 4 billion tweets posted on Twitter in the United States between 2014 and 2020. Next, the authors analyzed how the number of hateful tweets changed as local temperatures rose or fell.
To define hate speech, the researchers were guided by the official UN definition: instances of discriminatory language referring to a person or group on the basis of their religion, ethnic origin, nationality, race , color, origin, sex or any other identity factor.
In the United States, the authors found low levels of hateful tweets in a “wellness window” of 12–21°C (54–70°F); the minimum for hate tweets is reached for temperatures between 15 and 18°C (59–65°F).
Hotter and colder temperatures are linked to an increase in hate tweets. The precise feel-good temperature window varies quite a bit from climate zone to climate zone, depending on current temperatures.
Temperatures above 30°C (86 degrees Fahrenheit), however, are consistently linked to a sharp increase in online hate across all climate zones and to socio-economic differences such as income, religious beliefs or political preferences.
This highlights the limits of adaptability to temperature: “Even in high-income areas where people can afford air conditioning[ing] and other heat mitigation options, we see an increase in hate speech on extremely hot days.
“In other words: there is a limit to what people can take. Thus, there are probably limits to adaptation to extreme temperatures and these are lower than those set by our simple physiological limits,” says Anders Levermann, head of complexity science at the Potsdam Institute, a researcher at the University of Columbia in the United States, and co-author of the study.
The hidden climate impact: mental health
The consequences of more aggressive online behavior can be serious, as hate speech has been found to have negative effects on the mental health of victims of online hate. It can also be predictive of hate crimes in the offline world.
“For centuries, researchers have pondered the question of how climatic conditions affect human behavior and societal stability,” says Leonie Wenz, head of the working group at the Potsdam Institute who led the study. .
“Now, with ongoing climate change, this is more important than ever. Our findings highlight online hate speech as a new channel of impact through which climate change can affect overall societal cohesion and health. mental people.
See also
“So that means that cutting emissions very quickly and drastically will not only benefit the outside world. Protecting our climate from excessive global warming is also essential for our mental health.
About this environment and current psychology research
Author: Press office
Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Contact: Press Office – Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Image: Image is in public domain
Original research: Free access.
“Temperature Impacts on Online Hate Speech: Evidence from 4 Billion Location-Based Tweets from the United States” by Annika Stechemesser et al. Planetary Health Lancet
Summary
Impacts of Temperature on Online Hate Speech: Evidence from 4 Billion Location-Based Tweets from the US
Background
A link between weather and aggression in the offline world has been established in various societal contexts. Simultaneously, the rapid digitization of almost every aspect of daily life has resulted in a high frequency of interpersonal conflict online. Hate speech online has become a widespread problem that compounds mental health issues, especially among young people and marginalized groups. We examine the effect of temperature on the occurrence of hate speech on the social media platform Twitter and interpret the results in the context of the interrelationship between climate change, human behavior and mental health.
Methods
In this quantitative empirical study, we used a supervised machine learning approach to identify hate speech in a dataset containing approximately 4 billion geotagged tweets from 773 cities in the United States between May 1, 2014 and May 1, 2014. 2020. We statistically assessed changes in hateful tweets against changes in local temperature, isolating the influence of temperature from confounders using pooled panel regression models.
Results
The prevalence of hate tweets was lowest at moderate temperatures (12–21°C), and marked increases in the number of hate tweets were observed at warmer and colder temperatures, reaching up to 12.5% ( 95% CI 8 0–16 5) for extreme cold temperatures (–6 to –3°C) and up to 22 0% (95% CI 20 5–23 5) for extreme temperatures hot (42 to 45°C). Outside the moderate temperature range, hate tweets also increased as a proportion of total tweet activity. The near-quadratic shape of the temperature-hate-tweet curve was robust across different climate zones, income quartiles, religious and political beliefs, and city- and state-level aggregations. However, the temperature ranges with the lowest prevalence of hate tweets were centered around the local average temperature, and the magnitude of increases in hate tweets for hot and cold temperatures varied across climate zones.
Interpretation
Our results highlight online hate speech as a potential channel through which temperature alters interpersonal conflict and societal aggression. We provide empirical evidence that hot and cold temperatures can aggravate aggressive tendencies online. The prevalence of findings across climatic and socioeconomic subgroups indicates limitations in the ability of humans to adapt to extreme temperatures.
Funding
Volkswagen Foundation.