The Media's Misleading and Incomplete Story on Internet Harassment

I've written about this before, but it is endlessly annoying how the mainstream press tilts the narrative on Internet harassment. If you listen to the mainstream press, these are the details:

- Victims are always female.
- Perpetrators are always male and probably white too
- Victims are always liberal
- Perpetrators are always conservative.

None of this is true. 

Regarding men and women, a study by the Think Tank Demos found that received male celebrities, politicians and journalists received 150 percent more harassment than women in similar positions. A study by Pew found that “13 percent of female respondents and 11 percent of male respondents said they had been harassed or stalked online.” Another study by Pew found that while women were more likely to be sexually harassed and stalked online, men were more likely to be insulted or to receive death threats.

In other words, it's not a simple picture regarding gender.

 Now comes this from across the pond,

"MALE TORY MPS GOT MOST SOCIAL MEDIA ABUSE"

"Broken down by party and gender, male Conservative candidates were the group who received the highest percentage of abuse in their mentions, followed by male UKIP and Labour candidates, and female Conservative candidates. Analysis by a research team from the University of Sheffield based on tweets from the general public; replying to tweets made by MPs, candidates at the election and other prominent politicians. They sampled just under 840,000 tweets sent in the month before the general election between 8 May 2017 and 8 June 2017."

And it's not close. Conservative male MPs received over twice as many abusive mentions than liberal female MPs. I guess there's another mainstream media narrative up in flames.

But really, can this surprise anyone? Have you looked at the mentions Donald Trump gets for example? (Which Twitter seems to be trying to manipulate toward being even more negative by the way.)

Harassment is not a one-sided street. Indeed, it seems to be tilted in the opposite direction of what the mainstream media always complains about.