Women Politicians Trolled More- THE HINDU-24-01-2020

• Amnesty International India released a report titled “Troll Patrol India: Exposing Online Abuse Faced by Women Politicians in India”.

Key findings:

• The report analysed more than 114,000 tweets sent to 95 women politicians in the three months during and after last year’s general elections in India.

• The research found that women are targeted with abuse online not just for their opinions – but also for various identities, such as gender, religion, caste, and marital status.

• Indian women politicians face substantially higher abuse on Twitter than their counterparts in the U.S. and the U.K.

• Around 13.8% of the tweets in the study were either “problematic” or “abusive”. Problematic content was defined as tweets that contain hurtful or hostile content, especially if repeated to an individual on multiple occasions, but do not necessarily meet the threshold of abuse.

• While all women are targeted, Muslim women politicians faced 55% more abuse than others.

• Women from marginalised castes, unmarried women, and those from non-BJP parties faced a disproportionate share of abuse.