Did the public attribute the Flint Water Crisis to racism as it was happening? Text analysis of Twitter data to examine causal attributions to racism during a public health crisis.

ABSTRACT: The Flint Water Crisis (FWC) was an avoidable public health disaster that has profoundly affected the city's residents, a majority of whom are Black. Although many scholars and journalists have called attention to the role of racism in the water crisis, little is known about the extent to which the public attributed the FWC to racism as it was unfolding. In this study, we used natural language processing to analyze nearly six million Flint-related tweets posted between April 1, 2014, and June 1, 2016. We found that key developments in the FWC corresponded to increases in the number and percentage of tweets that mentioned terms related to race and racism. Similar patterns were found for other topics hypothesized to be related to the water crisis, including water and politics. Using sentimen

SUBMITTER: Bisgin N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10798656 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature