Indian women politicians face more digital abuse than US, UK counterparts

Indian women politicians faced more online trolling than their United Kingdom and United States of America counterparts, a first-of-its-kind report that tracked digital abuse over Twitter around last year’s general elections has revealed.

According to the details, Amnesty India International-International Secretariat analysed 114,716 tweets that mentioned 95 women politicians between March and May 2019 the elections were conducted over April and May and found that 13.8% of them were abusive and problematic.

By comparison, in 2017, Amnesty International and Element AI, a software company, surveyed millions of tweets received by 778 journalists and politicians all women from the United Kingdom and the United States of America, representing a variety of political views.

Among their top findings, 7.1% of tweets sent to the women in the study were problematic or abusive, amounting to 1.1 million tweets over 365 days.

The report quoted Hasiba Amin, INC’s national convener, social media said “I was told that ‘I have no right to speak as a Muslim woman’. Rape threats were routine, as were character assassinations, insinuations about my sexual relationships with older men.”

CPI (ML) Polit Bureau member Kavita Krishnan told HT that it was incorrect to refer to this abuse as trolling. “What we face is an organised, concerted campaign of threats and abuse, unleased by the ruling party, led specifically by persons holding public office a governor various BJP MPs and MLAs, and handles followed by the Prime Minister and various cabinet ministers.”

In response to Amnesty International India, in November 2019 Twitter listed several measures it has taken to decrease the levels of online abuse during the 2019 general elections.

“Across Twitter, more than 50% of tweets we took action on for abuse were proactively surfaced using technology, rather than relying on reports from people who use Twitter,” it pointed out.

“There was a 48% increase in accounts reported for potential violations of our Hateful Conduct policies… Similarly, we saw a 22% increase in accounts reported for potential violations of our abuse policies. We took action on 68% more accounts compared to the last reporting period.”

The report stated “The abuse in India is often in a variety of regional languages, including colloquial slang or Hindi in English (Latin) script. All this potentially escapes the radar of Twitter’s auto language detection.”

Twitter spokesperson said “We are aware that women in India, especially female politicians, may be more susceptible to abuse by virtue of the socio-cultural identities that they may hold. This is why we have a series of cultural trends abuse training material for the enforcement teams for certain countries, including India.”