Relative anonymity, no immediate consequences, and the ability to contact anyone at any time are a potent recipe when people vent their frustrations.
A report undertaken by the BBC’s Shared Data Unit analysed around three million tweets mentioning UK politicians over a six-week period, and put together some facts while hoping to identify who receives the most abuse, and why. On an average day, around 800,000 tweets mentioning at least one active and known Twitter account associated with a Member of Parliament went out. There was a tendency for this number to surge even higher during times of significant events, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the various resignations of MPs and Prime Ministers, reaching a peak of 270,000 a day compared to the average.
Over 130,000 of these tweets were considered to be “toxic”, according to Perspective API, a machine-learning tool designed to flag up harmful conversations on the Internet. The specific definition of “toxic” in this instance means a comment that’s rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable, at a level that’s likely to make the participant it’s aimed at in a conversation want to leave. The report found that female MPs had a slightly greater chance to receive these kinds of comments than their make counterparts. In general, there seemed to be more mentioning a male MP, though that’s likely due to the fact there were more male MPs in situ during the time the study was conducted, approximately one third compared to three quarters.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, MPs who speak on politically charged or divisive topics have received the most abuse from the public. Over half of the tweets were directed at members of the cabinet or shadow cabinet, although interestingly the 20 MPs to receive the worst of the comments were not themselves members of cabinet, but had commented on topics such as transgender rights. The most commonly employed insulting terms in the full array of comments were “stupid” and “pathetic”. Though female MPs were the more likely candidates to be called “ignorant” or “thick”, male MPs were more likely to be called liars.
As far as toxicity aimed at specific political parties, the Conservative party yielded the most of the high toxicity comments: former Prime Minister Boris Johnson getting most of them; 18,907, which was almost double what Rishi Sunak received during the same period. However, Labour leader Keir Starmer occupies the position of 4th MP to receive the most toxic tweets, at 926. Llanelli MP Nia Griffith received 1 toxic tweet out of 158 during the time of the study.
Head of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, Ellen Judson, commented on the study, saying:
“The effects are really serious — the status quo of online discourse is just untenable. We’ve seen stories of MPs feeling they have to step down because the abuse is too much, MPs being afraid for their families and we’ve seen people say they don’t want to get into politics for this reason. They have seen the abuse others have received and they think it’s just not worth it. The psychological toll on individuals is very serious – but there is a serious political toll as well. And these tend to be more marginalised groups.
By its own admission, the study isn’t flawless; there are difficulties inherent in trying to truly determine intent, and whether a negative comment or sentiment was sincerely aimed at someone, though it does paint a concerning trend. Members of Parliament are, of course, subject to the criticism and concerns of their constituents, but negative discourse has a tendency to make its targets become defensive, which could be seen to be self-defeating when trying to get an MP to engage.
Additionally, the tendency for toxic comments to be aimed at ethnic minorities and marginalised groups paints a concerning trend for fair and open discourse, particularly in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and the difficulties arising from his more relaxed stance on certain types of content moderation.
Though it may seem to be a distant concern from the lives of everyday people, it’s an undeniable fact that online spaces and social media are supremely important to the spread of news and information. The comparison to Twitter as the new town square is not without merit. As more of these spaces are bought up by individuals with an agenda, the number of truly open and fair forums is only going to get smaller, so it could be considered to be to everyone’s benefit to ensure that toxic commentary and discourse is cut off decisively.
