Torrent of online toxicity
The Canadian Press - August 25, 2021 / 10:41 am | History: 343883
Photo: Canadian Press
A project that examined more than 350,000 comments sent to candidates on Twitter during the first week of the federal election campaign found that more than a quarter of tweets were deemed toxic.
The executive director of the Samara Center for Democracy says the research, which only examined Twitter, found that 20 percent of tweets were at the middle or low end of what the project called a "toxicity scale," which contained sexist insults. rude language or comments.
Sabreena Delhon says another seven percent of the tweets were "severely toxic," including aggressive and hateful comments or threats of violence against the candidates or their families.
Delhon says the research found that women seeking reelection as liberals faced the most toxicity during the period studied and were more than five times more likely to receive toxic tweets than men running as candidates from the same party.
A spokesperson for Twitter Canada says the company takes action when it identifies tweets or accounts that violate company rules and that it has a civil integrity policy covering the posting of misleading content on Twitter.
The Samara Center is a nonpartisan think tank that partnered with Areto Labs, which has been tracking toxicity online for several years.
The organizations developed an artificial intelligence tool that uses machine learning to track toxic tweets received by political party leaders and incumbent candidates during the campaign.
