(Republicaninformer.com)- According to a research report published last Wednesday by the RAND Corporation, a study of the social media behavior of US Air Force active personnel and veterans found that the number of instances of so-called hate speech was nearly undetectable.
Researchers analyzed social media posts on Twitter and other platforms from accounts identified as belonging to members of the US Air Force “through a diversity, equity, and inclusion” lens and found that Air Force personnel, as well as dependents and veterans, avoided “hateful” speech.
The report concluded that the public evidence reveals that Air Force personnel “rarely use slurs” or “distinct hate speech terms.”
In addition to Twitter, the researchers also assembled communications from a Reddit thread popular with members of the Air Force as well as an internal forum for enlisted personnel by searching for keywords like “racism,” “affirmative action,” and “bigot,” occasions where “BLM” appeared with “riot” and racial slurs, and mentions about gender or critical race theory.
The Twitter data collected went back to 2018, while the data from Reddit and the internal forum went back to 2011, according to the study.
Of the 53.9 million tweets analyzed, researchers only found 2,371 (or 0.0031 percent) that contained a racial slur.
While the researchers did find instances of personnel criticizing the US Air Force’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies on both Reddit and the internal forum, those posts were “civil and constructive.” Primarily, the users expressed concern that the DEI training was “politically motivated,” according to the report.
RAND Corporation had hoped to use the results of the research to gauge the before-and-after effects of the Air Force’s DEI policies on public discourse. Unfortunately, the researchers “were unable to find” changes in DEI policies that would have had a “clear and major impact” on the online discourse among US Air Force personnel.
