Women of color running for Congress are disproportionately attacked in X, report finds

Women of color running for Congress in 2024 have faced a disproportionate number of X attacks compared to other candidates, according to a new report from the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the University of Pittsburgh.

The report sought to “compare the levels of offensive and hate speech targeted by different groups of congressional candidates based on race and gender, with a particular emphasis on women of color.” To do this, the authors of this report analyzed 800,000 tweets covering a three-month period between May 20 and August 23 of this year. That dataset represents all posts about a congressional candidate who has an account on X.

The report’s authors found that more than 20 percent of posts targeting Black and Asian women “contain offensive language about the candidate.” It also found that black women in particular were targeted by hate speech more often than other candidates.

“On average, less than 1% of all tweets about a candidate contain hate speech,” the report said. “However, we found that African-American women are more likely than any other population to be under this type of position (4%).” That’s roughly in line with X’s latest transparency report — since Elon Musk took over the company — which said infringing content accounted for less than 1 percent of all posts on its site.

Notably, the CDT report analyzed both hate speech — which clearly violates X’s policies — and “offensive speech,” which the report defined as “words or phrases that demean, threaten, insult, or mock a candidate.” While the latter category may not conflict with X’s laws, the report notes that the volume of breast attacks may still prevent women of color from running for office. It recommends that X and other platforms take “certain steps” to combat such effects.

“This should include clear policies that prevent attacks based on race or gender, more transparency on how their systems deal with these types of attacks, better reporting tools and accountability mechanisms, regular risk assessments that emphasize race and gender, and privacy. maintaining the means for independent researchers to conduct studies using their data. The results of the status quo in which women of color are targeted for significant cyberattacks at far higher rates than other participants creates a major barrier to creating a truly inclusive democracy.”