From the article:

"There were, both shockingly and unsurprisingly, many more where that came from. And many of those tweets were geocoded: Embedded in them were data about where in the U.S. they were sent from.

Floating Sheep, a group of geography academics, took advantage of that fact to turn hatred -- and, just as often, stupidity -- into information. The team searched Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned "Obama," "re-elected," or "won." That search resulted in (a shockingly high and surprisingly low) 395 tweets. The team then sorted the tweets according to the state they were sent from, comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period (November 1 - 7). To normalize states across population levels, the team then used a location quotient-inspired measure -- an economic derivation used to analyze norms across geographical locations -- to compare a state's racist tweets to the national average of racist tweets.

So, per the team's model, a score of 1.0 indicates that the state's proportion of racist tweets to non-racist tweets is the same as the overall national proportion. A score above 1.0 indicates that the proportion of racist tweets to non-racist tweets is higher than the national proportion."

But then. I live here. I've known all my life how racist this city is.

MO is a very racist state.

it seemed so racist.

Last year we went to a resort in the middle of the state for a professional conference. I rode down with an AA friend. She got gas here at home and insisted we all get our drinks and go to the bathroom before we left because she didn't want to stop at any gas stations in central MO.

Just makes me ill.

friends that retired to a beautiful area of Virgina and are eventually leaving because it has become so infiltrated with the religious right. And I have other friends that left Tennessee because they were fed up with these types of things, racism and the religious right.

It's a shame, and it just makes me ill too. Everyone is not that way, but there are enough that gives an area or state a bad rap. I'm also wondering what's going to happen with Kansas now the Republicans and Koch brothers pretty much will be fully running the state.

Oh and San Diego should surprise none.

Idaho is over 35% Mormon and they're usually reticent about publicity,
which is why you probably don't know that 35% of Idaho is Mormon.

Of the remaining 65%, about half are from California, mostly S.F and L.A.

The black population there is almost non-existent.

my great grandfather was a polygamous mormon.. the town of Rexburg was derived from the family name... i grew up around mormons... i left Idaho in the mid 70's when the popular bumper sticker was "don't Californicate Idaho"..

i remember when MLK was shot, the mormons were rejoicing.. ps Bannock county has a higher percentage of mormons than does SLC

I already saw this on Gawker. I'm still depressed about it.

There's a thick line of tweets between Houston and College Station, Texas.


Class of '94

*sigh*

One of the most racially segregated areas of the country.

really says something for the USA. We all aren't fortunately racist. Obama has had such hurdles to climb, many would have fallen far short of his success. He's an amazing person.

And 20 others, including Colorado and Wisconsin. Imagine. So much for some stereotypes flying around DU about Texas.

And, yes, many people use Twitter here in Texas, so that's not the reason for the lower number. [url=http://www.cosgan.de/smilie.php][img][/img][/url]

Suprised that Indiana is one of the nicer states. Isn't it a stronghold of the KKK? As for Minnesota, Bachmann Bozos are working overtime to tarnish the Progressive reputation of their compatriots, sadly.

They're everywhere.

The son/daughter of some rich right-wing fuckstick from Waukesha County (Or any of the suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee) attending UW Madison. Or maybe someone working for one of the many Teabaggers in our State Assembly or Senate. Or someone working for one of the many right wing lobbying groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

but mostly east of the Mississippi.

And those places with very few people (Idaho, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming) also have populations that are 95% white.

Grrrr.

They did a study of that amount of tweets in a nation of over 300 million people and came to a conclusion about the supposed racism of these states based on less than 400 tweets nationwide?????