In partnership with Element AI, an artificial intelligence software company, a so-called “Troll Patrol” group of 6,500 volunteers from more than 150 countries helped analyze millions of tweets for Amnesty’s large-scale survey, released Tuesday. The tweets surveyed were those received by 778 journalists and politicians hailing from both the U.S. and the U.K. throughout 2017, looking at the threats faced by specific racial and ethnic backgrounds as well as political affiliations.
“We are experiencing a watershed moment with women around the world using their collective power to speak out about the abuse they face and amplify their voices through social media platforms,” said Amnesty’s report. Yet the study revealed just how much abuse women face on these very platforms, with 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets sent to the 778 women included in the dataset over the course of the year, equalling one every 30 seconds on average. Abusive tweets were categorized as those that violated the social media platform’s own rules, such as language including physical or sexual threats, while problematic tweets were defined by Amnesty as those containing hostile content, including those reinforcing negative or harmful stereotypes against a group of individuals.
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