Which politicians receive abuse? Four factors illuminated in the UK general election 2019

Abstract

The 2019 UK general election took place against a background of rising online hostility levels toward politicians, and concerns about the impact of this on democracy, as a record number of politicians cited the abuse they had been receiving as a reason for not standing for re-election. We present a four-factor framework in understanding who receives online abuse and why. The four factors are prominence, events, online engagement and personal characteristics. We collected 4.2 million tweets sent to or from election candidates in the six week period spanning from the start of November until shortly after the December 12th election. We found abuse in 4.46% of replies received by candidates, up from 3.27% in the matching period for the 2017 UK general election. Abuse levels have also been climbing month on month throughout 2019. Abuse also escalated throughout the campaign period. Abuse focused mainly on a small number of high profile politicians, with the most prominent individuals receiving not only more abuse by volume, but also as a percentage of replies. Abuse is "spiky", triggered by external events such as debates, or certain tweets. Some tweets may become viral targets for personal abuse. On average, men received more general and political abuse; women received more sexist abuse. Conservative candidates received more political and general abuse. We find that individuals choosing not to stand for re-election had received more abuse across the preceding year.

Vindication, virtue, and vitriol

“…During the COVID-19 pandemic, we can see a similar effect, for example, the wearing of face-coverings as a personal versus social choice, 16 and participation in protest versus public health. 17 Increased name recognition and popularity have also been associated with higher levels of abuse in both the cases of Brexit and General Elections [30,34,51,74]. Our COVID-19 data show similar trends.…”

“…A rule-based approach was used to detect abusive language, as in previous work [ 30 ]. An extensive vocabulary list of slurs (e.g., “idiot”), offensive words such as the “f” word and potentially sensitive identity markers, such as “lesbian” or “Muslim”, forms the basis of the approach.…”

“…For RQ2, we consider how our findings fit the dimensions noted by Andreouli et al [ 1 ] as impacting contemporary British political discourse: ideology, authority, and affect. We explore the four factors that contribute to how these dimensions are perceived, such as prominence, specific events, engagement habits, and features of identity [ 30 ]. Finally, for RQ3, we present our qualitative analysis on the social media activities of UK MPs during COVID-19 thus far.…”

“…Gorrell et al [30] extended this work to define four visibility factors that appear to influence the amount of abuse the UK MPs receive online:…”

“…Gorrell et al [ 30 ] extended this work to define four visibility factors that appear to influence the amount of abuse the UK MPs receive online: Prominence: Individuals in the public eye will receive more abuse; Event surges: Events leads to spikes in abuse (such as participation in an event or political activities); Engagement: Expressing strong opinions on social media can result in more personal abuse; Identity: Gender, ethnicity, and other personal factors impact which opinions one is allowed to hold and express without receiving abuse. Gorrell et al also note that the impacts or consequences of abusive language are not manifesting in the same ways for male and female MPs, or MPs with intersectional identities of race and gender.…”