Where do angry birds tweet? Income inequality and online hate in Italy

Daria Denti and Alessandra Faggian

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Do spatial socioeconomic features influence a digital behaviour like cyberhate? Our contribution provides an answer to this question, showing how high levels of income inequality determine high volumes of hate tweets in Italy. Our findings are robust to potential endogeneity problems of income inequality, as well as to the inclusion of confounding factors and to competing estimation strategies. Additionally, we find that education does not act as a protective factor against cyberhate in unequal places, aligning with existing evidence showing that inequality may trigger intolerance, including among educated people, threatening the perceived stability of social positions. Also, in the Italian case, the perception of economic insecurity fuels cyberhate, alongside the transmission of self-interest values along family generations. The latter finding relates to existing evidence supporting the role of persistent social norms in shaping people’s attitudes.

Keywords: hate; online behaviour; inequality; self-interest; conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D74 J15 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2021-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 1, November, 2021, 14(3), pp. 483 – 506. ISSN: 1752-1378

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112200/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Where do angry birds tweet? Income inequality and online hate in Italy (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112200

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().