Demos, a left-wing Soros-Open Society affiliated UK think tank, did a study of “slurs” on Twitter.

The Daily Mail Reports, Just how racist is Twitter?

10,000 racist tweets are sent ever day, a major new study into racism on social networks has discovered.

Research by the think tank Demos found the biggest insult was ‘white boy’

Researchers analysed 126,975 English-language tweets from across the globe over a 9-day period in the biggest ever study of Twitter racism.

Researchers revealed the most common racial slurs used on the micro-blogging site included ‘whitey’ and ‘pikey’.

However, as many as 70% of tweets using such language were deemed to be using slurs in non-derogatory fashion.

‘This sparks the debate about the extent to which Twitter truly is a platform for racism and abusive language,’ the report claims.

Jamie Bartlett, Director of CASM at Demos and author of the report, said: ‘Twitter provides us with a remarkable window into how people talk, argue, debate, and discuss issues of the day.

‘While there are a lot of racial slurs being used on Twitter, the overwhelming majority of them are not used in an obviously prejudicial or hateful way.