Cumbria’s MPs were subjected to hundreds of toxic tweets in a six week period, new data has revealed.
The BBC data unit found that Westmorland and Lonsdale Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron received the most ‘toxic’ tweets – 347 – from March 15 to April 23, while Carlisle Conservative MP, John Stevenson, received the fewest – five.
Tweets were rated as toxic if they were considered rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comments likely to make someone leave a conversation.
Workington Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson received 194 tweets, and Conservative MP for Barrow and Furness Simon Fell received 10, while Penrith and the Border Conservative MP Neil Hudson received seven. Copeland Conservative MP Trudy Harrison was not included in the data, as she does not use Twitter.
Out of their totals, Mr Farron was sent 30 severely toxic tweets and Mr Jenkinson received 29, while Dr Hudson received one.
Across the 599 MPs using Twitter around the UK, Mr Farron came 62nd and Mr Jenkinson was 85th for receiving the most abusive tweets in the country.
Nationally, Conservative MPs were nearly twice as likely as a Labour MP to receive a tweet classed as severely toxic. However, across the North West, Labour MPs received more abuse proportionally than anywhere else in the country.
A total of three million tweets mentioning MPs from across the UK were analysed in one of the largest studies of its kind to find out how many of the tweets could be classed as abuse.
Machine learning was used to rate each tweet for toxicity, with severely toxic tweets being more abusive than there toxic counterparts.
More than 130,000 tweets mentioning MPs were considered likely to be toxic, while 20,000 were classed as severely toxic. Among the tweets, the words “stupid” and “pathetic” were the two most commonly used adjectives.
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.”
MPs who received the largest share of abuse had been outspoken on topics that stir up strong feelings. Among them were MPs targeted for speaking out on transgender rights, MPs who defended Boris Johnson over Partygate, and an MP criticised the actor Will Smith for his Oscars ceremony attack on Chris Rock.
Mr Farron has been using Twitter since October 2009 and has a total of 84,491 tweets on his account; Mr Jenkinson joined in February 2010 and has tweeted 13,491 times.
Dr Hudson joined Twitter in May 2019 and has a total of 2,627 tweets, while Mr Fell joined in September 2008 and has a total of 6,483 tweets. Mr Stevenson has used Twitter since December 2010 and has tweeted 2,150 times.
