Hate speech on social networks increases when temperatures become extreme

Increases in hate speech on Twitter were seen on days when it was either too hot or too cold outside. — Photography Souvik Banerjee/Unsplash/AFP

Climate change could be increasing the frequency of hateful posts on Twitter. While the link between the two might not necessarily seem obvious, researchers have found that, in the United States, increases in hate speech on the social network coincide with days when it is either too hot or too cold.

Published in The Lancet Planetary Health, the study was conducted by researchers at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), who sifted through more than four billion posts on Twitter from users in the United States between 2014 and 2020. They then analyzed them using artificial intelligence and combined them with weather data.