Hated in the Nation
MAT 259, 2019
Meilin Shi
Concept
Hate crimes, hate speech, and hate groups have caught my attention for quite a while. For this project, I decided to do a visualization of all the hate groups across the US in 2018. Hate group, defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is an organization that - based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities - has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.
The title of this project is borrowed from the final episode of Black Mirror Season 3, talking about hate speech on social media.
The title of this project is borrowed from the final episode of Black Mirror Season 3, talking about hate speech on social media.
Data
Data come from the Southern Poverty Law Center, who publishes an annual census of hate groups operating within the United States since 1990. I choose to use the latest 2018 data, which contains 1020 hate groups. Data I used also include 1000 largest US cities by population with coordinates and state coordinates. The hate group data does not include geographic coordinates, so I need to match the city and state name with the coordinates data to get the location. For hate groups without city name or city name does not fall into the 1000 cities, I use state coordinates for the location.
Preliminary sketches
I would like to visualize hate groups by ideology.
Process
At the bottom are 1000 largest cities in the US, mapped out by geographic coordinates. On the top are 15 hate group ideologies, x and y-axis determined by the last entry (group) within each distinct ideology, z-axis and size of the dot determined by the count of hate groups (i.e. bigger dots on top of smaller).
Final result
The overview of all hate groups. Each line represents a single hate group. The color of the line indicates ideology, connecting the hate group's location at the bottom with the ideology dot on top.
I also include the description for each ideology when making single selection.
It's interesting to see some of the groups show spatial context. For example, the Neo-confederate groups only exist in the southeast corner of the US, because of the history background in Civil War and slavery.
I also include the description for each ideology when making single selection.
It's interesting to see some of the groups show spatial context. For example, the Neo-confederate groups only exist in the southeast corner of the US, because of the history background in Civil War and slavery.
Code