1/ Some interesting ideas in this short piece on tackling our toxic political discourse. THREAD on the abuse of MPs https://twitter.com/RichardHRBenyon/status/1349672697261920256

2/ tl;dr: The language politicians themselves use is statistically associated with the abuse their colleagues receive. Tackling the abuse of MPs will require greater discursive courtesy among MPs and peers, inter alia.

3/ Some views of my own on what more the police, political parties and parliament can do - in addition to obvious changes needed by social media companies - to tackle the abuse of elected officials in particular: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/invective-infection-what-do-about-abuse-mps/

4/ But as @RichardHRBenyon acknowledges in his piece, parliamentarians themselves must take some responsibility for the deterioration in political discourse in recent years. (Thanks @AlistairBurtUK for flagging this piece.)

5/ My research - analysing 1.8 million tweets sent to MPs in September 2019, plus the transcripts of 32 interviews with MPs and their staff - shows a clear association between politicians' use of inflammatory language (surrender, traitor) and the abuse their colleagues receive.

6/ On 25th September 2019, the day parliament returned after its prorogation, inflammatory terms like 'surrender', 'betrayal' and 'traitor' were used 82 times by MPs & peers in parliament - more than on any other day in the pre-election period.

7/ In the following week, the percentage of abusive tweets sent to MPs more than doubled relative to the previous week, from 4.33% to 8.74%, having spiked dramatically on 25th September.

8/ This, of course, is a correlation - it is not itself proof of a causal relationship.

9/ That said, the % of abusive tweets containing the same inflammatory terms that parliamentarians were using, e.g. 'surrender' & 'traitor', also spiked in this period, suggesting citizens who choose to abuse MPs may take linguistic cues from their political leaders.

10/ Both of these changes were more pronounced for those MPs who voted for the Benn Act - the Act blocking no deal at the end of 2019 which the government referred to as the 'Surrender Act' - than for those MPs who opposed it.

11/ It appears, then, that elite inflammatory language is a highly effective technique for mobilising a political base during deeply polarised political moments, which begs the question of how to disincentivise elites from engaging in this sort of rhetoric themselves.

12/ The normative reasons for doing so are obvious. A majority of the MPs and parliamentary assistants I interviewed described how the abuse they received had harmful effects on their well-being, the execution of their duties, or their willingness to continue in their role.

13/ These effects included self-censorship, reduced accessibility to constituents, a reluctance to stand for elected parliamentary positions, an avoidance of controversial topics and campaigns, and a diminished willingness to run for office in future.

14/ Simply calling out inflammatory language does not appear to be a solution by itself. On my count, in the week before 25th September 2019, @paulasherriff was the 81st most abused MP on Twitter...

15/ She then gave a speech appealing to the prime minister to refrain from using words like 'surrender', which she claimed were echoed in death threats that she received. In the week after her speech, she became the 6th most abused MP on Twitter. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/26/surrender-humbug-most-heated-exchanges-in-commons-debate

16/ Social media companies, the police, party whips, and parliament all have a role to play in combatting online abuse.

17/ But until parliamentarians themselves refrain from denigrating their colleagues, incivility-prone citizens are likely to continue viewing the abuse of MPs as a legitimate form of political activism. END

18/ PS - Toxic language is clearly a feature of political discourse on both sides of the aisle and is strategically applied across multiple policy domains - it is not specific to one party, or to the Brexit debate.