Daily, more than 3,000 insulting tweets are sent to UK Members of Parliament.
A six-week analysis of three million tweets directed towards members of parliament revealed that more than 130,000, or around one in twenty, might be classified as poisonous.
The intensity of harassment, according to Representative Jess Phillips, has produced an unsustainable atmosphere in which politicians are hesitant to express their opinions on significant subjects.
Twitter could not be reached for comment.
Our analysis revealed that more than 130,000 tweets mentioning members of Congress were potentially hazardous, and 20,000 were extremely toxic.
None of the 20 MPs who received the largest proportion of negative comments were cabinet or shadow cabinet members.
Ms. Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, stated that parliamentarians acknowledged that vigorous criticism was part of their job, but that sexist, racist, or overly sexualized language crossed a boundary.
“Sadly, women politicians suffer significant amounts of thinly veiled or outright rape and sexual violence threats,” she said.
“It crosses the line when it becomes not about a subject but about your appearance and your children and family.”
Ms. Phillips stated that she knew of colleagues who voted against their values on a variety of issues, such as Brexit and military engagement in Syria, to avoid social media backlash.
The examination
Perspective, a technique employing artificial intelligence, was utilized to identify harmful online comments.
It was created by Jigsaw, a Google research unit, and defines a toxic comment as one that is “rude, disrespectful, or illogical” and “likely to cause someone to quit a conversation.”
This involves a wide variety of outcomes, ranging from labeling someone an “idiot” to, in the most extreme examples, misogyny and racism.
From March through mid-April, the team analyzed all tweets mentioning members of Congress.
Researchers and journalists can measure a phenomenon on a scale that would not be possible with other methods without machine learning algorithms.
As with the majority of statistical methods, an algorithm will generate an estimate with a certain margin of error, but the margin will be small enough to serve as a useful guide to the magnitude of phenomena.
What we observed
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson received 19,000 poisonous tweets or almost 4% of the total number of tweets he received.
Other MPs who received the most insulting tweets were former culture secretary Nadine Dorries (9,000), then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (9,000), and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (9,000). (8,000).
However, the MPs who received the biggest share of negative tweets at the time were backbenchers.
Among them was Ben Bradley, the Conservative representative for Mansfield. After calling for the privatization of Channel 4, he was cited in hundreds of negative tweets.
James Murray, the shadow financial secretary, received more than 300 hateful tweets in a single day after discussing transgender rights in a radio interview.
Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison received nasty comments after writing a critical open letter to actor Will Smith in response to his assault on Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.
Ms. Davison is an advocate for heightened awareness of the dangers of one-punch attacks.
“I’ve had folks talking about how my dead dad must be looking down on me in disgrace,” she added. There has been a great deal of sexually explicit material.
The investigation revealed that female lawmakers were more likely than their male counterparts to be labeled “thick” and “ignorant” and subjected to sexualized terminology.
Virginia Crosbie, who was elected to the Ynys Môn seat in North-West Wales in 2019, stated that she has received multiple violent threats over social media, including threats of being hanged and poisoned.
She said: “It is utterly horrifying. In my view, we are experiencing an epidemic on all social media platforms, not just Twitter.
“It is imperative that society call it out. What we are seeing on social media is the opposition… use it to dehumanize me – I receive the Holy Trinity of abuse, I am a woman, I am a Conservative and I sound English.”
Why I quit
Meon Valley Conservative MP Flick Drummond abandoned Twitter in 2021, alleging “out-of-control” harassment.
She explained that she left Twitter because trolls could hide behind anonymous names.
She stated, “You are unaware of their identity. It’s awful, and I have to say my mental health is significantly improved since I’ve come off it.
Ellen Judson is the head of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos.
She said social media was becoming increasingly “democratically dangerous” in the way it was affecting discourse and normalizing misogyny.
“It is crucial to a democracy that the public be able to criticize their representatives, and that representatives be held accountable,” she said.
“But if what we are seeing is this abuse occurring and then that affecting how MPs are voting and thinking about the decisions they are making – that’s not based on listening to the public and engaging with the public’s experience – it’s just responding to a fear of abuse from a minority of very loud trolls.”
Ms. Phillips stated that certain topics had become harder to discuss online.
She stated, “Due to the type of abuse you will see online – and especially on Twitter – Twitter is not an appropriate venue for a debate.
“The trans argument is exactly the sort of subject where you can see this writ huge. People will not touch it regardless of your perspective, and the majority of legislators will have a nuanced perspective.
“It is impossible to win in that area because it is so horrible.
“Specifically the problem of women’s rights colliding with the transgender debate. Without a question, the poisonous environment has stymied efforts to make headway on this subject.”
What are the options?
Last month, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, completed his $44 billion (£38.1 billion) acquisition of Twitter, saying days later that its moderation practices will remain unchanged for the time being.
Mrs. Phillips and Demos concur that stricter regulation of social media corporations is necessary.
Mrs. Judson stated that part of the difficulty in lowering toxicity stemmed from the fact that these businesses were viewed as a forum for free speech while simultaneously functioning in a commercial setting.
She said that this meant the content most likely to receive “clicks or likes or shares” was also “the most polarising, contentious, and toxic.”
Ms. Phillips stated that the delayed Online Safety Bill undergoing parliamentary consideration must include “real criminal and financial repercussions” for businesses that fail to regulate online harassment.
Twitter has previously stated that it is dedicated to enforcing its Hateful Conduct Policy.
On its website, the company states: “We are committed to combatting abuse motivated by bigotry, prejudice, or intolerance, particularly abuse aimed at silencing the voices of historically marginalized groups.
“Because of this, we prohibit conduct that targets individuals or groups for abuse based on their perceived membership in a protected category.”
Additionally, the firm has also stated that its platform is significantly more accessible than those of other social media companies, allowing researchers to “improve and study the public dialogue.”
Jigsaw’s manager of software engineering, Lucy Wasserman, stated: “Perspective’s primary objective is to distinguish toxicity from mere negativity.
“You should be able to provide constructive criticism without the algorithm detecting it. A constructive critique should not be considered harmful.”
