The most homophobic places in America and Britain have been revealed
A new survey of millions of tweets has identified the most homophobic places in the US and the UK.
Anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label and research firm Brandwatch reviewed a random sample of 19 million tweets in the UK and US between 2012 and 2016.
390,000 homophobic tweets were identified among the 19 million, suggesting homophobic attitudes appear to have declined from previous peaks.
Racism and sexism were much more prevalent than homophobic insults among users of Twitter.
For every eight positive or neutral tweets referring to sexual orientation there was one negative tweet.
Five US states had particularly high rates of homophobic tweets: Michigan, Ohio, Nevada, Arizona and Texas the world offenders.
All of the most homophobic places, bar Nevada, voted for Donald Trump to be president.
Washington and New York had the most positive references to sexual orientation in tweets.
In the UK, the most widespread homophobic abuse was seen in Denbighshire, north Wales, and Dundee, Scotland.
Other areas with high homophobic hate speech included Glamorgan and Gwent in south Wales and East Yorkshire and Peterborough in England.
The investigation found that homophobic insults were more common among men than women, with 64% of the negative tweets from males.
Those with a keen interest in sports were also found to be more likely to use homophobic language, suggesting a correlation with masculinity.
Of the positive tweets – which was the vast majority overall – the Orlando shootings and Sochi Olympics had prompted the biggest outpourings.
