Title
Twits, Twats and Twaddle: Trends in Online Abuse towards UK Politicians.
Abstract
Concerns have reached the mainstream about how social media are affecting political outcomes. One trajectory for this is the exposure of politicians to online abuse. In this paper we use 1.4 million tweets from the months before the 2015 and 2017 UK general elections to explore the abuse directed at politicians. Results show that abuse increased substantially in 2017 compared with 2015. Abusive tweets show a strong relationship with total tweets received, indicating for the most part impersonality, but a second pathway targets less prominent individuals, suggesting different kinds of abuse. Accounts that send abuse are more likely to be throwaway. Economy and immigration were major foci of abusive tweets in 2015, whereas terrorism came to the fore in 2017.
Year
Venue
Field
2018
ICWSM
Internet privacy,Social media,Computer science,Terrorism,Immigration,Criminology,Politics,Mainstream,General election,Second pathway
DocType
Citations 
PageRank 
Conference
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Genevieve Gorrell126622.00
Mark A. Greenwood226920.60
Ian Roberts320717.68
Diana Maynard41799160.95
Kalina Bontcheva52538211.33