Sussex research shows women tweet abuse as much as men

Men do not have a monopoly on misogynist tweets, a Demos study found.

Research on online misogyny shows that women are almost as likely as men to use misogynistic terms when addressing each other on social media.

Between 26^th December 2013 and 9^th February 2014, a team from the think-tank Demos at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the University of Sussex collected English-speaking tweets using the terms ‘slut’ and ‘whore’.

They found over 6 million tweets which they narrowed down to 131,000 coming from UK accounts.

According to the team of analysts 18% of them appear misogynistic.

https://twitter.com/iamkrause/statuses/465890268756324353

https://twitter.com/kidrxuhldrew/statuses/465841557724487680

Out of the sheer number of tweets using such derogatory terms, what is more surprising is the fact that women use those words as much as men.

They direct them at each other both casually and offensively.

Sofia Patel, one of the 5 analysts who have worked on the study, claims “Women are increasingly more inclined to engage in discourses using the same language that has been, and continues to be, used as derogatory against them.”

https://twitter.com/AnaPurrs/statuses/465877793817903105

The study also found a high proportion of ‘casual’ misogyny on the social network.

They analysed thousands of tweets containing the word ‘rape’ and around 29% of them used the term in a casual or metaphorical way.

For the words ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ the proportion rises to 35%.

Prompted by last summer’s series of Twitter threats sent to UK female journalists and activists, the study found that 12% of the tweets using ‘rape’ were threatening.

A trained classifier analysed them to distinguish those which were conversational from those that were threats.

He also found that men used the word ‘rape’ more.

Previous studies showed that women are more likely to be subjected to online abuse and threats than men.

But as Demos highlights with these new findings, they are not only receiving them but also sending them.

As Sofia Patel puts it ‘It is possible that people have become desensitised to this language through casual usage, while not realising the potential impact of these words in different contexts’.

https://twitter.com/AnaPurrs/statuses/465877793817903105