Weather extremes spur rise in online hate speech

CLIMATE change is making us angrier online. A lot angrier. Hateful comments spike on social media when temperatures rise above 30degC, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have found.

‘‘It’s an indicator of how well people can adapt to high temperatures,’’ Annika Stechemesser, lead author of the study published in The Lancet Planetary Health, said earlier this month.

‘‘If temperatures go too hot or too cold, we found that there’s an increase in online hate speech, no matter the socioeconomic differences, religion or political beliefs.’’

Global warming of about 1.1degC on average since preindustrial times has unleashed all sorts of extreme weather events across the world.

This northern summer, drought and a string of heatwaves hit Europe, China and the United States.

For humans, heat is associated with psychiatric hospitalisations, increased rates of suicide and more domestic violence, according to research.

And aggressive behaviour online has been linked to violence offline, too. Incensed posts have led to more violence toward minorities, including mass shootings, lynchings and ethnic cleansing, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a New Yorkbased think tank.

Stechemesser and other researchers analysed a sample of 4 billion tweets between 2014 and 2020 from users based in the US. They used artificial intelligence to identify about 75 million hate messages in English, using the United Nations definition of online hate, which includes racial discrimination, misogyny and homophobia. They then analysed how the number of tweets changed when local temperatures fluctuated.

The researchers found that online hate speech increased as daily maximum temperatures rose above 21degC. Hate messages went up as much as 22% on hot days, compared with the average online hate during times of mild weather.

Across all climate zones and socioeconomic groups in the

US, online tensions intensified even more significantly when temperatures exceeded 30degC. Researchers observed that online hate speech increased by as much as 24% from the feelgood point — when temperatures reached 42degC to 45degC in US regions with hot and dry climates, such as parts of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

Last year, a study by the same researchers focusing on Europe reached similar conclusions.

‘‘When discussing climate change, it’s a point to remember that we feel the effects everywhere, not just in places with big disasters,’’ Stechemesser said.

‘‘There are places where the social consequences of heat have been not discussed very thoroughly, especially around how we can live together as a society and deal with our wellbeing in the future.’’

Researchers analysed the tweets as a whole and did not look into specific incidents. That means there is no way to know if the weather made online tensions worse following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, for instance, or in the lead up to the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

But some conclusions can be reached as the US midterm elections on November 8 approach.

‘‘Our results show that if September is particularly hot, we can expect to see more hate on Twitter,’’ Stechemesser said.

‘‘But the research doesn’t really show what kind of hate it is or on what topics.’’ — Bloomberg News