Exploring Online Manifestations of Real-World Inequalities

Abstract

Socioeconomic gaps, particularly income inequality, affect crime and public opinion. Although official data sources can identify these patterns of income-based social disparity, a fundamental question remains: Can similar social inequalities be found using abundant Internet user activity? (i) How does a neighbourhood's income affect crime discussion in the neighbourhood? (ii) Can user-generated data predict a neighbourhood's income? To answer these questions, we collected 2.5 million Nextdoor posts from 67608 US and UK neighbourhoods between November 2020 and September 2021. We use official US and UK data sources for crime and income information.