Indian women leaders trolled more than those in US, UK
NEW DELHI: Indian women politicians experience substantially higher online abuse than their United Kingdom and United States of America counterparts, a first-of-its-kind report that tracked digital abuse over Twitter around last year’s general elections has revealed.
Amnesty India International (henceforth Amnesty)-international Secretariat analysed 114,716 tweets that mentioned 95 women politicians between March and May 2019 — the elections were held in April and May — and found that 13.8% of them were abusive and problematic.
By comparison, in 2017, Amnesty International and Element AI, a software company, surveyed millions of tweets received by 778 journalists and politicians — all women — from the UK and USA, representing a variety of political views.
Among their top findings, 7.1% of tweets sent to the women in the study were problematic or abusive.
‘Troll Patrol India: Exposing Online Abuse Faced by Women Politicians in India’ includes Twitter’s response as well as Amnesty’s recommendations. The report did not name the women.
Amnesty revealed that of the 95 women politicians, 44 were from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 28 were from the Indian National Congress (INC), and 23 were from other parties such as Aam Aadmi Party, Apna Dal, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, among others.
The study relied upon the perception of decoders who were shown tweets with the username obscured. Most of the tweets analysed were in English.
The report found that the more marginal the identity, the higher the frequency of problematic and abusive tweets. The seven Muslim women among the 95 experienced 55.5% more problematic or abusive content compared to others.
Women from marginalised castes (total 19) received 59% more casteist slurs than women from general castes.
According to the women politicians HT spoke to as well as those quoted in the report, the issue of online abuse cuts across party lines.
“Everyone suffers trolls, but for women, it is taken to another level. It’s all unrelated to politics and very personal things (are said) that men are never asked,” Shazia Ilmi, a member of the BJP, told HT.
“I was told that ‘I have no right to speak as a Muslim woman’,” the report quoted Hasiba Amin, INC’S national convener, social media, as saying.
“What we face is an organised, concerted campaign of threats and abuse, unleased by the ruling party, led specifically by persons holding public office — a governor — various BJP MPS and MLAS, and handles followed by the Prime Minister and various cabinet ministers,” CPI (ML) Polit Bureau member Kavita Krishnan told HT .
In response to Amnesty, in November 2019 Twitter listed several measures it has taken. “Across Twitter, more than 50% of tweets we took action on for abuse were proactively surfaced using technology, rather than relying on reports from people who use Twitter,” it pointed out.
However, the report pointed out: “The abuse in India is often in a variety of regional languages, including colloquial slang or Hindi in English (Latin) script. All this potentially escapes the radar of Twitter’s auto language detection.”