LONDON: Female politicians and journalists of colour in Britain and the US are disproportionately targeted for online abuse, according to a crowdsourced study that found they received “problematic messages” every 30 seconds on average.

The assessment — by Amnesty International and artificial intelligence company Element AI — found that black women in these roles were 84 pc more likely than white counterparts to receive abusive messages on Twitter in 2017.

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The firms signed up more than 6,500 volunteers from 150 countries to take part in its “Troll Patrol” project to flag and process large-scale data about online abuse.

“Troll Patrol means we have the data to back up what women have long been telling us — that Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are allowed to flourish basically unchecked,” said Milena Marin of Amnesty International.

“We found that, although abuse is targeted at women across the political spectrum, women of colour were much more likely to be impacted, and black women are disproportionately targeted.”

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2018