IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cjrecs/v14y2021i3p483-506..html

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

Author

Listed:
  • Daria Denti
  • Alessandra Faggian

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Daria Denti & Alessandra Faggian, 2021. "Where do angry birds tweet? Income inequality and online hate in Italy," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 483-506.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cjrecs:v:14:y:2021:i:3:p:483-506.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cjres/rsab016
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daria Denti & Alessandro Crociata & Alessandra Faggian, 2023. "Knocking on Hell’s door: dismantling hate with cultural consumption," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 47(2), pages 303-349, June.
    2. Daria Denti & Alessandra Faggian, 2024. "Welcome to the Punch. Local exposure to refugees and hate events in Italy," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1415-1442, April.
    3. Daria Denti & Alessandro Crociata & Alessandra Faggian, 2021. "Knocking on Hell’s door. Dismantling hate with cultural consumption," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2131, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Oct 2021.
    4. Daria Denti & Simona Iammarino, 2025. "Forced labour in manufacturing and the local industry structure: the case of Italy," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(6), pages 831-851.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cjrecs:v:14:y:2021:i:3:p:483-506.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cjres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.