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  1. Science & Tech
26 May 2016

Are 50 per cent of misogynistic tweets really sent by women?

A new Twitter analysis suggests that while women may troll differently to men, they do abuse one another more than we realise. 

By Barbara Speed

Trolls are white men alone in their bedrooms, right? We all know that. We also know that women are generally targeted, harassed and trolled online far more than men.

But a new study by Demos, released to coincide with the launch of Yvette Cooper’s Recl@im the Internet campaign against online misogyny, suggests otherwise. Based on 10,000 tweets sent by 6,500 users in the UK over three weeks, an algorithm judged that around 50 per cent of those sending aggressive tweets containing the words “slut” or “whore” were, in fact, women.

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