Solidarity and strife after the Atlanta spa shootings: A mixed methods study characterizing Twitter discussions by qualitative analysis and machine learning

Criss, Shaniece; Nguyen, Thu T.; Michaels, Eli K.; Gee, Gilbert C.; Kiang, Mathew V.; Nguyen, Quynh C.; Norton, Samantha; Titherington, Eli; Nguyen, Leah H.; Yardi, Isha; Kim, Melanie; Shepherd, Ariel; Kennedy, Chris

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.952069

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Spikes in negative sentiment were observed in March 2020 with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of stigmatizing language to refer to COVID-19, such as “China virus” and “Chinese virus.” 5 , 36 Another increase in the negative sentiment of tweets referencing Asians was observed in March 2021 with the Atlanta spa shootings, when a white man shot and killed eight primarily Asian women at Atlanta-area spa and massage parlors (Figure 2 ). 37 …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5,36 Another increase in the negative sentiment of tweets referencing Asians was observed in March 2021 with the Atlanta spa shootings, when a white man shot and killed eight primarily Asian women at Atlanta-area spa and massage parlors (Figure 2). 37 Overall, the US became more negative in racial sentiment, referencing racially minoritized groups (Figures 3-4) with all states experiencing an increase in negative racial sentiment from 2011 to 2021. States that experienced the greatest change toward more negative racial sentiment include Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Vermont, and Maine.…”

Section: Visualizing a Decade Of Social Media Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Decade of Tweets: Visualizing Racial Sentiments Towards Minoritized Groups in the United States Between 2011 and 2021

Nguyen,

Merchant,

Yue

et al. 2023

Epidemiology

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Background: Research has demonstrated the negative impact of racism on health, yet the measurement of racial sentiment remains challenging. This paper provides practical guidance in using social media data for measuring public sentiment. Methods: We describe the main steps of such research including data collection, data cleaning, binary sentiment analysis, and visualization of findings. We randomly sampled 55,844,310 publicly available tweets from January 1, 2011 – December 31, 2021 using Twitter’s Application Programming Interface. We restricted analyses to U.S. tweets in English using one or more 90 race-related keywords. We used Support Vector Machine, a supervised machine learning model, for sentiment analysis. Results: The proportion of tweets referencing racially minoritized groups that was negative increased at the county, state, and national levels with a 16.5% increase at the national level from 2011-2021. Tweets referencing Black and Middle Eastern people consistently had the highest proportion of negative sentiment compared to all other groups. Stratifying temporal trends by racial and ethnic groups revealed unique patterns reflecting historical events specific to each group such as the killing of George Floyd regarding sentiment against Black people, discussions of the border crisis near the 2018 midterm elections against Latinx people, and the emergence of COVID-19 against Asian people. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the utility of social media data as a quantitative means to measure racial sentiment over time and place. This approach can be extended to a range of public health topics to investigate how changes in social and cultural norms impact behaviors and policy.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Visualizing a Decade Of Social Media Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A Decade of Tweets: Visualizing Racial Sentiments Towards Minoritized Groups in the United States Between 2011 and 2021

Nguyen,

Merchant,

Yue

et al. 2023

Epidemiology

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“…These events, including the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, changed the sentiment and volume of discussions related to race and racism on the web [ 57 ]. These events were commonly characterized by a rapid change in racial sentiment, lasting a few weeks, followed by a return to near baseline levels [ 57 - 59 ]. In 2020, we saw associations between negative sentiment and adverse birth outcomes remaining comparable to other years.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Twitter-Derived Negative Racial Sentiment as Indicators of Cultural Racism: Observational Associations With Preterm Birth and Low Birth Weight Among a Multiracial Sample of Mothers, 2011-2021

Nguyen¹,

Merchant²,

Criss³

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background Large racial and ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes persist. Increasing evidence points to the potential role of racism in creating and perpetuating these disparities. Valid measures of area-level racial attitudes and bias remain elusive, but capture an important and underexplored form of racism that may help explain these disparities. Cultural values and attitudes expressed through social media reflect and shape public norms and subsequent behaviors. Few studies have quantified attitudes toward different racial groups using social media with the aim of examining associations with birth outcomes. Objective We used Twitter data to measure state-level racial sentiments and investigate associations with preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW) in a multiracial or ethnic sample of mothers in the United States. Methods A random 1% sample of publicly available tweets from January 1, 2011, to December 31, 2021, was collected using Twitter’s Academic Application Programming Interface (N=56,400,097). Analyses were on English-language tweets from the United States that used one or more race-related keywords. We assessed the sentiment of each tweet using support vector machine, a supervised machine learning model. We used 5-fold cross-validation to assess model performance and achieved high accuracy for negative sentiment classification (91%) and a high F1 score (84%). For each year, the state-level racial sentiment was merged with birth data during that year (~3 million births per year). We estimated incidence ratios for LBW and PTB using log binomial regression models, among all mothers, Black mothers, racially minoritized mothers (Asian, Black, or Latina mothers), and White mothers. Models were controlled for individual-level maternal characteristics and state-level demographics. Results Mothers living in states in the highest tertile of negative racial sentiment for tweets referencing racial and ethnic minoritized groups had an 8% higher (95% CI 3%-13%) incidence of LBW and 5% higher (95% CI 0%-11%) incidence of PTB compared to mothers living in the lowest tertile. Negative racial sentiment referencing racially minoritized groups was associated with adverse birth outcomes in the total population, among minoritized mothers, and White mothers. Black mothers living in states in the highest tertile of negative Black sentiment had 6% (95% CI 1%-11%) and 7% (95% CI 2%-13%) higher incidence of LBW and PTB, respectively, compared to mothers living in the lowest tertile. Negative Latinx sentiment was associated with a 6% (95% CI 1%-11%) and 3% (95% CI 0%-6%) higher incidence of LBW and PTB among Latina mothers, respectively. Conclusions Twitter-derived negative state-level racial sentiment toward racially minoritized groups was associated with a higher risk of adverse birth outcomes among the total population and racially minoritized groups. Policies and supports establishing an inclusive environment accepting of all races and cultures may decrease the overall risk of adverse birth outcomes and reduce racial birth outcome disparities.

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“…This novel hate speech measurement system allowed us to estimate the precise location of each Facebook post on the hate speech spectrum, where more negative scores were more indicative of violent, racist language, and more positive scores were indicative of benevolent race-related speech. We have recently leveraged this technology to evaluate social media discussions around the 2021 Atlanta Spa shootings [ 29 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Exposure to Messaging, Content, and Hate Speech from Partisan News Social Media Posts on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities

Nguyen

Merchant

et al. 2023

IJERPH

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We investigated the content of liberal and conservative news media Facebook posts on race and ethnic health disparities. A total of 3,327,360 liberal and conservative news Facebook posts from the United States (US) from January 2015 to May 2022 were collected from the Crowd Tangle platform and filtered for race and health-related keywords. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on a random sample of 1750 liberal and 1750 conservative posts. Posts were analyzed for a continuum of hate speech using a newly developed method combining faceted Rasch item response theory with deep learning. Across posts referencing Asian, Black, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and immigrants/refugees, liberal news posts had lower hate scores compared to conservative posts. Liberal news posts were more likely to acknowledge and detail the existence of racial/ethnic health disparities, while conservative news posts were more likely to highlight the negative consequences of protests, immigration, and the disenfranchisement of Whites. Facebook posts from liberal and conservative news focus on different themes with fewer discussions of racial inequities in conservative news. Investigating the discourse on race and health in social media news posts may inform our understanding of the public’s exposure to and knowledge of racial health disparities, and policy-level support for ameliorating these disparities.

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Solidarity and strife after the Atlanta spa shootings: A mixed methods study characterizing Twitter discussions by qualitative analysis and machine learning

Cited by 10 publications

References 25 publications

A Decade of Tweets: Visualizing Racial Sentiments Towards Minoritized Groups in the United States Between 2011 and 2021

A Decade of Tweets: Visualizing Racial Sentiments Towards Minoritized Groups in the United States Between 2011 and 2021

Examining Twitter-Derived Negative Racial Sentiment as Indicators of Cultural Racism: Observational Associations With Preterm Birth and Low Birth Weight Among a Multiracial Sample of Mothers, 2011-2021

Examining Exposure to Messaging, Content, and Hate Speech from Partisan News Social Media Posts on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities

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