Tracking Twitter responses to the news of UK asylum seekers being sent to Rwanda
April 20, 2022 — HANNAH RICHTER
On Thursday 14 April, Boris Johnson announced that anyone who enters the U.K. illegally will now be relocated to Rwanda. Johnson called it an ‘innovative approach’, with Priti Patel labelling it a ‘global first’. However, Patel failed to mention that Israel also had a similar scheme set up with Rwanda in 2013, a scheme that was held to be highly problematic, according to testimonies. Australian offshore detention centres have been internationally condemned due to severe human rights violations found there, and just last year, Denmark passed legislation allowing it to relocate asylum seekers to third countries outside the EU, prompting an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the international community.
Using our AI dashboard, we tracked the Twitter narratives surrounding the response to Johnson’s announcement. Our dashboard is programmed to identify hate speech on social media, therefore it was interesting to see that the majority of hateful narratives were directed towards Johnson, Patel, and the Conservative government, as well as towards Rwanda and their history. The average toxicity level was quite low, however, scored at 0.20 (with 1.0 being the highest). Within the dataset of over 10,000, roughly 150 messages (2%) scored a high toxicity level of 0.80.
Figure 1: Timeline of average toxicity over the past two weeks
Looking at the word cloud of the top 50 keywords, we can see that the most used word is genocide. When analysing the individual tweets, we find that this makes reference to the Rwandan genocide, as well as the Holocaust, and the Nazi’s plan to send Jews to Madagascar. Individuals on Twitter are using these events to draw parallels and show their disgust at the government for this new scheme, with many using hateful rhetoric to do so.
Figure 2: Word cloud of top 50 keywords. The words in bold are considered a threat.
Figure 3: Example tweet likening the UK scheme to the Nazi plan to send Jews to Madagascar.
Figure 4: Example tweet mentioning the genocide in Rwanda.
Priti Patel came under the most fire, often being called a ‘vile woman’, a ‘bitch’, and a ‘cunt’. References to her immigrant parents were made as well.
Figure 4: Example tweet of hateful rhetoric towards Priti Patel.
Figure 5: Example tweet of hateful rhetoric towards Priti Patel.
Femi Oluwole, a well-known political commentator, had his tweet picked up through our dashboard. Femi highlighted a point made by many others, reflecting on the double standards towards refugees that the U.K has. (Read more on this here)
Figure 6: Tweet from Femi Oluwole.
Despite a large volume of tweets harbouring hateful rhetoric towards the Conservative government, there were also many in agreement with the government’s new scheme, using toxic language to describe the ‘woke lefties’ to be sent to Rwanda next.
Figure 7: Example tweet in agreement with the UK government scheme.
Figure 8: Example tweet in agreement with the UK government scheme.
Regardless of whether you agree with the U.K government’s new scheme, it is important to remember two points: firstly, hateful rhetoric online only causes more hate, no matter what your standpoint is, and secondly, no human is illegal, nor should they ever have to face human rights violations whilst trying to seek refuge.