Study: Men Are More Likely to Troll and Be Trolled

According to a report from the British think tank Demos, men are more likely to receive abusive tweets than women. The report analyzed 2 million tweets for abusive words, as defined by Google’s search language filter. The report found that men were also much more likely than women to troll others on the social network.

Out of all the tweets that men received, over 2.5 percent were abusive. For women, the proportion was less than one percent. For male politicians and celebrities, over five percent of tweets were abusive.

The only category where women received more abuse than men were journalists. Over five percent of the tweets female journalists received were abusive, compared to less than two percent for their male counterparts.

The report also found that Piers Morgan received the most trolling on Twitter: 8.4 percent of tweets he received were abusive. He was followed by Ricky Gervais at 2.6 percent.

While the study only looked at a sampling of messages on Twitter, other evidence suggests that women receive the bulk of abuse on social media. The terms regarded as abusive by the report did not include words like “kill,” “rape” and “die.”

For the full report, click here [PDF].

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