A Nottinghamshire MP has received the highest proportion of ‘toxic tweets’ aimed directly at him than any other MP in the UK.
The BBC Shared Data Unit analysed millions of tweets mentioning MPs over a six-week period to find out just how much of that could be classed as abuse.
Machine Learning was used to rate each tweet for toxicity.
The algorithm’s definition of toxicity is a “rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone leave a conversation”.
The 3 million tweets mentioning UK politicians were analysed over a six-week period between March and April 2022.
Which accounts received the most toxic tweets?
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson received the most tweets rated above 0.7 by the toxicity measure. The 18,907 tweets he received crossing this threshold were more than double that of the next nearest MPs, then chancellor Rishi Sunak and the former culture secretary Nadine Dorries.
Toxic tweets by proportion
Due to the sheer volume of tweets mentioning the highest profile politicians in the two previous charts, neither appear in the top ten for toxicity when adjusting for proportionality.
The 18,907 tweets mentioning Boris Johnson above the 0.7 threshold accounted for only 3.5% of the total he received. None of the MPs to receive the highest percentage of toxic tweets in the UK occupied a space on either front bench, although former health secretary Matt Hancock is among the top ten.
Top here is Mansfield Conservative MP Ben Bradley, who has stated on record that he was considering stepping down at the next election due to the level of online abuse he had received. Mr Bradley is followed by Labour member for Ealing North James Murray and Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden Siobhain McDonagh.
When looking at severe toxicity (below) – again the Mansfield MP was mentioned in the highest proportion of tweets. He was followed by Conservative MP for Reigate Crispin Blunt, Labour member for Ealing North James Murray and Bishop Auckland’s Conservative MP Dehenna Davison.
Please note for the chart below the data unit filtered out results for MPs that had received less than 1,000 tweets mentioning them during the study period for this particular chart.
It should also be noted that five of the top ten here are relatively new to politics and first became an MP after 2015. James Murray, Dehenna Davison and Natalie Elphicke were elected for the first time at the most recent election in 2019.
Ben Bradley
Although the Mansfield MP is not a prominent member of the frontbench, he received proportionally more abuse than any other person in the study.
More than 15% of all tweets at Mr Bradley received during the six-week period were classified as toxic.
Almost all of the abuse appears to have been linked to a tweet he posted on 5 April suggesting the culture secretary’s plan to privatise Channel Four would save the taxpayer money – a claim that was contested.
The most commonly used adjectives in tweets mentioning the MP were ‘stupid’, ignorant’ and ‘thick’.
Example tweet:
“@BBradley_Mans YOU IDIOT! YOU LIAR! IT RECEIVES NOT A PENNY FROM US IN TAX!! ITS ‘FREE TO F*CKING AIR’ THATS HOW IT WORKS!!”
Speaking to West Bridgford Wire Councillor Ben Bradley MP said that it was a sad indictment of our society that the constant abuse of MPs is something that was very much part of political life in 2022.
Mr Bradley said:
“I’ve suffered online abuse for a number of years. It’s a daily occurrence that in some respects I’ve learned to live with. Where I draw the line is when it is aimed at my wife and children, this crosses a line which is never acceptable nor should be tolerated.
“Over the years, I’m proud of my support for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people and I think my record speaks for itself where I’ve championed issues in this area.
“So when people on Twitter attack me for being uncaring and not interested in young people’s futures they do not know me or what I stand for.
Mr Bradley said he would never want to curtail free speech or silence peoples’ views so he’s learnt to ignore the abuse and handle it “robustly”.
“He also praised the police and Parliament for stepping in to support when abuse had involved death threats, kidnap and serious threats.”
Notes on methodology
To give some context these notes partly explain how the study was carried out.
In order to get a picture of direct toxic and insulting language the BBC studied the most commonly occurring two and three word phrases within the toxic tweets. For both male and female MPs the versions of “you are” and “you’re” appear among the most frequent three-word phrases, known as trigrams.
They used regular expression analysis to find out what words followed versions of “you are” and and “you’re” as these would give them an idea of the sort of words used in focused toxicity.
The most common word to follow “you are a” and “you’re a” for both men and women was “disgrace” as seen in the table below. Aside from the ten most commonly occurring ‘you are a’ phrases shown here, there were several examples of “you are a” preceding extreme profanities.
What has happened to those accounts?
Of the 50 accounts to send the greatest volume of toxic-rated tweets mentioning men
- 9 out of the 50 accounts had been suspended by Twitter as of July 2022
- 2 had been deleted
- 39 accounts were still active
- None could be considered bots under the recommended threshold set by botometer, a free online resource that detects the probability that an account is fake.
Of the 50 accounts to send the greatest volume of toxic-rated tweets mentioning women
- 11 out of the 50 accounts had been suspended by Twitter as of July 2022
- 1 had been deleted
- 38 were still active
- None could be considered bots under the recommended threshold set by botometer.
- More than 130,000 (5%) of those tweets were deemed to be ‘toxic’, according to Perspective API, a machine-learning tool built to identify harmful conversations online. It defines a toxic comment as a rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone want to leave a conversation.
- Female MPs were marginally more likely to receive abuse than their male counterparts.
- MPs who received the largest share of abuse had been outspoken on topics that stir up strong feelings. All 20 of the MPs to receive the most abuse proportionally were not members of the cabinet. Among them were MPs targeted for speaking out on transgender rights, MPs who defended Boris Johnson over Partygate, and an MP who criticised the actor Will Smith for his Oscars ceremony attack on Chris Rock.
- Four out of five of the most prolific toxic tweeters against male and female MPs continued to have an active account. One user sent 128 tweets that crossed the toxicity threshold during the six weeks.
- “Stupid” and “pathetic” were the two most commonly used adjectives in toxic tweets. Female MPs were more likely to be called “thick” and “ignorant” and be subject to sexualised language while their male counterparts were more likely to be called “liars”.
