Female politicians see most online abuse in run-up to election

Female SNP politicians received some of the worst abuse on social media during the recent general election campaign,researchhasfound.

Sexist, homophobic, sectarian and racist abuse was used to target Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry and Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh, who lostherseatinochilandsouth Perthshire, in the build-up to the June vote.

But by far the worst abuse directed at women MPS was suffered by Labour’s Dianne Abbott, who dealt with almost half (45.14 per cent) of abusive tweets sent in the six weeks leading up to the election – about ten times more than any other woman. Ms Abbot was forced to briefly withdraw from the campaign due to health issues.

However, excluding Ms Abbott, SNP party members received the most abuse, the study by Amnesty Global Insights found.

Ms Cherry was on the wrong end of the second highest volume of insulting tweets among all women MPS. She said she was “disappointed but not surprised” by the findings.

“I’m sick of the misogynist, homophobic, sectarian anticatholic & racist anti Scottish & anti Irish abuse I get but it won’t shut me up,” she added on Twitter.

Ms Ahmed Sheikh said she had suffered “horrific levels of abuse” stretching back to the 2015 election campaign. She was targeted by messages inciting sexual assault against her, and also had her home address and postcode tweeted, which meant the police had to patrol by her house.

She told researchers: “It hurts a lot. It really, really hurts a lot. It’s personal. People are criticising you, where you come from, your parents, what you believe in, the religion which you believe in, and for being a woman, in which you don’t have a choice … so that is really hard to deal with.”

The report analysed more than 900,000 tweets in the six months before this year’s election, using the social listening tool Crimson Hexagon, and estimated that a total of 37,364 abusive tweets were issued.

The report entitled Unsocial Media: Tracking Twitter Abuse against Women MPS, was published by researcher Azmina Dhrodia.

“While online abuse is certainly not limited to women in the public eye, women politicians face an extraordinary amount of abuse on social media,” the report states.

“Whether women use social media platforms as public figures or for personal use, the threat of abuse is all too real and it is having a silencing effect on women’s participation online and in the public sphere.”

0 Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh said the abuse ‘really, really hurts’