Twitter's New Ownership, As Told Through Posts About Greta Thunberg
February 15, 2023
Unravel the Conspiracy behind Conspiracies
Ever since Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg first addressed the United Nations at the age of sixteen, calling for school strikes until there is political action against climate change, she has been the subject of misogynist, ageist and ableist hatred online. Many have latched onto her as a symbol of elitism, that is disconnected from reality. Unsurprisingly, as a young woman, she has often received misogynistic hatred and threats. Some have discredited or dismissed her due to her age. Still others have pointed out her autism, a diagnosis that she is open about, and smeared her for being “retarded” to discredit her work around climate activism.
We wanted to analyse English-language posts about her to see if there was an increase in toxicity surrounding her latest media appearances. Coincidentally, Elon Musk officially took over Twitter in the middle of our observation period (21 October 2022 – 5 November 2022), making sweeping changes to content moderation policies across the platform, leading to a spike in toxicity on Twitter, which greatly impacted our findings.
We decided to focus our attention on Twitter and 4Chan to compare a mainstream social media platform like Twitter with a notoriously toxic and less moderated platform such as 4Chan. However, after the takeover of Twitter on 27 October 2022, we observed that many of the narratives surrounding Greta Thunberg on Twitter were starting to sound a lot more like those that typically circulate on 4Chan, which points towards a potentially significant increase in overall toxicity on the platform.
We searched for posts containing the words “Greta” and “Greta Thunberg” for a period of two weeks, from 21 October 2022 until 5 November 2022. Our researchers pulled the top 15 most toxic posts, and created word clouds to examine the language used in relation to Greta Thunberg and analyse how this changed over time.
What we found
One of the most significant findings was the spike in toxicity that emerged on Twitter shortly after the takeover of the platform on 27 October 2022. While Greta Thunberg has regularly been a target of misogynist hatred on platforms like 4Chan, the language in posts on Twitter changed significantly. During the first observation period, the most common toxic keywords were: “nigger, snot, ridiculous, ethnic, dipshits, raping, stupid, dong, invasion and faggots.” During the second, there was a marked increase in both antisemitism and misogyny; the most common toxic keywords included: “genocide, Zionist, idiot, bitch, commie, dipshits, raping, dong, enemy, and new world order.”
The numbers: During the first week of observation (21 October – 27 October 2022), the most toxic messages were on 4Chan, with 1 percent of messages being categorised as “threatening” and another 1 percent being categorised as “disinformation”. However, during the second period of our observation (27 October – 5 November 2022), the most toxic messages were on Twitter, with 4 percent of all messages being categorised as threatening and 3 percent being categorised as disinformation.
The words: Through our analysis, we observed many posts that were critical of Greta Thunberg throwing her weight behind speaking out against the “racist, capitalist, imperialist” structures of the Western world. Many of these were openly racist, with several being antisemitic in nature. A number of others were threatening, often characterised by blatant misogyny.
Racism: Even though Greta Thunberg is white and European, many of the posts associated with her have racialised undertones, with “nigger” appearing in several and an overall increase in antisemitism, particularly on Twitter.
Antisemitism: After the takeover on 27 October 2022, there was an increase in antisemitism in tweets discussing Greta Thunberg, with words like “Zionist,” “Rothschild,” and “Goldman Sachs” increasing in association with her, often in the same posts.
Misogyny: While Greta Thunberg has consistently been the object of misogynistic hate, we observed an increase in threats of gender-based violence, and accusations of her being a whore since 27 October 2022.
Is hate coming back to the mainstream?
Even though Greta Thunberg is only one person, her role as a young, outspoken woman climate activist often serves as a microcosm of gendered hate speech and toxic narratives that emerge in reaction to discourse surrounding the climate crisis.
Through our study, we found that the takeover on Twitter on 27 October 2022 led to a marked increase in hate speech on Twitter, specifically. While it is still too early to determine the degree to which the changes to content moderation on Twitter have impacted the platform, our observation showed a potentially significant shift; while Twitter rarely used to platform the kind of openly racist and antisemitic content seen on 4chan, it is now very easy to find.
After only two weeks of observation, we are alarmed to see that there is already more of the hateful content that has always lurked in the shadows on platforms like 4Chan coming into the mainstream.
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