Summers in New Orleans are never easy, and many locals refer to the intensity of August as a time for folks to act weirder and wilder than usual. Somehow, when the calendar changed to September, the temperatures here became more manageable. I’ve been able to comfortably run in the mornings and even relax on my steps in the early evening. Not everyone’s had such a reprieve, given the extreme heat overtaking parts of California and elsewhere. When faced with less-than-friendly temperatures, they may be taking out that anger online. That’s what a new study posits in The Lancet, linking extreme temperatures—both frigidly cold and burning hot—with online hate speech.
Researchers used machine learning to analyze more than four billion tweets posted in the U.S. between 2014 and 2020, cross-checking those tweets with a massive list of hate speech linked to the U.N.’s definition. That includes discriminatory language based on race, religion, and gender, among other factors. While hate speech increased in extreme cold and extreme heat, researchers did notice a middle ground that they dubbed the “feel-good window.” The fewest hateful tweets were sent when temperatures were between 59 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit, though the overall window of 54 to 70 degrees provides a good marker of when folks in the U.S. stayed friendly when taking to Twitter.
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The research found that extreme temperatures truly impacted everyone—regardless of economic status. “Even in high-income areas where people can afford air conditioning and other heat mitigation options, we observe an increase in hate speech on extremely hot days,” study co-author Anders Levermann, who heads the Complexity Science at the Potsdam Institute and is a researcher at Columbia University said. “In other words: There is a limit to what people can take. Thus, there are likely limits of adaptation to extreme temperatures, and these are lower than those set by our mere physiological limits.”
Hateful tweets increased up to 12% in colder weather and up to 22% in hotter weather outside of that “feel-good window.” There’s already been much written about how hate speech can affect a person’s mental health. And, the connection linking extreme weather exacerbated by climate change and mental health isn’t new, either. In fact, the New York Times published a recent piece about extreme heat and mood and mental health disorders last month. This study adds yet another facet to that discussion and, to the researchers who wrote it, exemplifies just how many aspects of our lives that climate change impacts.
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