Introduction

The level of abuse that politicians receive on social media has become a topic of major concern among politicians, the media and academics, not just in Ireland but across all democracies. In some instances this abuse has manifested into physical assault and intimidation of politicians at their homes or as they conduct their work (Burns 2021; Lally 2019; Kent 2021; Dodd 2021; BBC News 2016). In Ireland there have been reports that online abuse of politicians is on the rise (Hosford 2020) with abuse becoming more personalized, viscous and sustained. In some instances abuse has been reported to be directed at family members and many politicians in Ireland have commented that the level of abuse leads them to engage less or not at all on social media.

A report commissioned by the National Women’s Council of Ireland reported cases of stalking, as well as racist and sexist abuse on women who ran in the 2019 local elections. Social media was identified as an area where women were subjected to high levels of abuse with 35% of women Councillors having experienced sexual harassment or sexual misconduct in their political role, some of which being received through social media (Pauline Cullen 2019). Furthermore Emma DeSouza, Women in Leadership Coordinator for the National Women’s Council of Ireland has said

“Women continue to experience high levels of gender-based abuse and harassment in carrying out their everyday roles as public representatives. This misogynistic and regularly also racist abuse, particularly online, is becoming an increasing barrier to women’s political participation. This is a clear threat to our democracy and completely unacceptable. Political parties have a clear responsibility to ensure women politicians can feel safe in performing their duties.”

There have been calls for more regulation and action to be taken to tackle the abuse that politicians receive on social media, particularly female politicians (Fegan 2021; Souza 2021; Bray 2021). It is unclear what is the best method for tackling abuse on social media; some politicians have even gone as far as to suggest that ID should be required in order to have a social media account (Gataveckaite 2021). In developing methods to tackle online abuse of politician it may be useful to get an understanding of the nature of political incivility on social media. When does it occur? How does it occur? To whom does it target? and by who does it originate?

Understanding the nature of abuse on social media towards politicians has been conducted in other jurisdiction, such as the United States (Theocharis et al. 2020) and the United Kingdom (Theocharis et al. 2016). While there is a paucity of academic analysis of social media abuse towards Irish politicians, an analysis conducted by the Irish Independent estimated that people of color and LGBTQ+ politicians received significantly more abusive tweets than other politicians over a three month period (Coyne 2020).

In this analysis the nature of abuse towards politicians on Twitter will be investigated. Data on tweets directed at Irish politicians was collected over a 12 month period and the context of tweets (i.e. whether they were abusive or not) was determined using artificial intelligence. Collecting data over such a long period allowed for longitudinal analysis on the response of social media users to events of high salience as well as capturing acute events of abuse towards politicians.

The possibility of shared communities of prolifically abusive accounts was investigated using network analysis along with estimations of abusive accounts political leanings. Furthermore the existence of ‘Shinner bot’ (a common term used in Irish politics in reference to the possible existence of fake accounts which are coordinated by the Sinn Féin party to attack political rivals and journalists online) was investigated using a machine learning model to estimate the probability that an account was a ‘bot’ account.

Finally this analysis looked at whether women politicians are more likely to receive abusive tweets compared to their male colleagues, accounting for other factors such as their reach on social media, their political affiliations and the level of office they hold.

Data

Irish public representative twitter accounts

Available twitter accounts of all public representatives (elected to the Dáil, county council, Seanad, European Parliament or Presidency) and political parties in Ireland were collated as part of this analysis. Of the 1191 public representatives and major political parties in Ireland, 851 or 71% had Twitter accounts. Table 1 summarises the number of representatives with Twitter accounts by gender and level of office. Table 2 are all of the twitter accounts that were included in this analysis.

Table 1: Summary of Public representatives with Twitter accounts
Group Total With Twitter Account Women Total Women with account Men Total Men with account
Dáil 160 154 37 36 123 118
European Parliment 13 13 5 5 8 8
Local 949 617 233 181 712 435
Party 7 7 NA NA NA NA
President 2 2 NA NA 2 2
Seanad 60 58 22 22 37 36
Table 2: Twitter accounts of Irish political parties and public representatives
Name Constituency Party Group account name gender
President of Ireland NA NA President PresidentIRL M
Michael D Higgins NA NA President MichaelDHiggins M
Fianna Fáil NA FF Party fiannafailparty NA
Fine Gael NA FG Party FineGael NA
Green Party NA GP Party greenparty_ie NA
Labour Party NA LAB Party labour NA
Social Democrats NA SD Party SocDems NA
Sinn Féin NA SF Party sinnfeinireland NA
People before profit NA SPBP Party pb4p NA
James Browne Wexford FF Dáil JamesBrowneTD M
Mary Butler Waterford FF Dáil MaryButlerTD F
Thomas Byrne Meath East FF Dáil ThomasByrneTD M
Jackie Cahill Tipperary FF Dáil jackiecahillff M
Dara Calleary Mayo FF Dáil daracalleary M
Jack Chambers Dublin West FF Dáil jackfchambers M
Niall Collins Limerick County FF Dáil NiallCollinsTD M
Barry Cowen Laois-Offaly FF Dáil CowenBarry M
Cathal Crowe Clare FF Dáil CathalCroweTD M
Éamon Ó Cuív Galway West FF Dáil eamonocuiv M
Cormac Devlin Dún Laoghaire FF Dáil CormacDevlin M
Stephen Donnelly Wicklow FF Dáil DonnellyStephen M
Joe Flaherty Longford-Westmeath FF Dáil joefla M
Seán Fleming Laois-Offaly FF Dáil SeanFlemingTD M
Norma Foley Kerry FF Dáil NormaFoleyTD1 F
Seán Haughey Dublin Bay North FF Dáil sean_haughey M
John Lahart Dublin South-West FF Dáil JohnLahart M
James Lawless Kildare North FF Dáil lawlessj M
Marc MacSharry Sligo-Leitrim FF Dáil MarcMacsharryTD M
Micheál Martin Cork South-Central FF Dáil MichealMartinTD M
Paul McAuliffe Dublin North-West FF Dáil PaulMcauliffe M
Charlie McConalogue Donegal FF Dáil McConalogue M
Michael McGrath Cork South-Central FF Dáil mmcgrathtd M
John McGuinness Carlow-Kilkenny FF Dáil JMcGuinnessTD M
Michael Moynihan Cork North-West FF Dáil mmoynihantd M
Aindrias Moynihan Cork North-West FF Dáil AindriasMoynih1 M
Darragh O’Brien Dublin Fingal FF Dáil DarraghOBrienTD M
Jim O’Callaghan Dublin Bay South FF Dáil OCallaghanJim M
James O’Connor Cork East FF Dáil JamesOConnorTD M
Jennifer Murnane O’Connor Carlow-Kilkenny FF Dáil JenMurnaneOConn F
Willie O’Dea Limerick City FF Dáil willieodeaLIVE M
Christopher O’Sullivan Cork South-West FF Dáil COSullivanTD M
Pádraig O’Sullivan Cork North-Central FF Dáil padraigosull M
Anne Rabbitte Galway East FF Dáil AnneRabbitte F
Brendan Smith Cavan-Monaghan FF Dáil BrendanSmithTD M
Niamh Smyth Cavan-Monaghan FF Dáil NiamhSmythTD F
Robert Troy Longford-Westmeath FF Dáil RobertTroyTD M
Chris Andrews Dublin Bay South SF Dáil chrisandrews64 M
John Brady Wicklow SF Dáil johnbradysf M
Martin Browne Tipperary SF Dáil Browne4Dail M
Pat Buckley Cork East SF Dáil patbuckleysfme M
Matt Carthy Cavan-Monaghan SF Dáil mattcarthy M
Sorca Clarke Longford-Westmeath SF Dáil SorcaClarke_TD F
Rose Conway-Walsh Mayo SF Dáil conwaywalsh F
Réada Cronin Kildare North SF Dáil ReadaCronin F
Seán Crowe Dublin South-West SF Dáil SeanCroweTD M
David Cullinane Waterford SF Dáil davidcullinane M
Pa Daly Kerry SF Dáil NA M
Pearse Doherty Donegal SF Dáil PearseDoherty M
Paul Donnelly Dublin West SF Dáil PaulDonnellySF M
Dessie Ellis Dublin North-West SF Dáil cllrdessieellis M
Mairéad Farrell Galway West SF Dáil Farrell_Mairead F
Kathleen Funchion Carlow-Kilkenny SF Dáil Kathleensf1 F
Thomas Gould Cork North-Central SF Dáil ThomasGouldSF M
Johnny Guirke Meath West SF Dáil JohnnyGuirke M
Martin Kenny Sligo-Leitrim SF Dáil Martin_Kenny M
Claire Kerrane Roscommon-Galway SF Dáil ClaireKerrane F
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn Donegal SF Dáil PadraigMacL M
Mary Lou McDonald Dublin Central SF Dáil MaryLouMcDonald F
Denise Mitchell Dublin Bay North SF Dáil DMitchellTD F
Imelda Munster Louth SF Dáil ImeldaMunster F
Johnny Mythen Wexford SF Dáil JohnnyMythenSF M
Eoin Ó Broin Dublin Mid-West SF Dáil EOBroin M
Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire Cork South-Central SF Dáil Donnchadhol M
Ruairí­ Ó Murchú Louth SF Dáil ROMurchu M
Louise O’Reilly Dublin Fingal SF Dáil loreillysf F
Darren O’Rourke Meath East SF Dáil orourke_darren M
Maurice Quinlivan Limerick City SF Dáil QuinlivanTD M
Patricia Ryan Kildare South SF Dáil NA F
Aengus Ó Snodaigh Dublin South-Central SF Dáil aosnodaigh M
Brian Stanley Laois-Offaly SF Dáil BrianStanleyTD M
Pauline Tully Cavan-Monaghan SF Dáil PaulineTullyTD F
Mark Ward Dublin Mid-West SF Dáil Wardy1916 M
Violet-Anne Wynne Clare SF Dáil WynneTd F
Colm Brophy Dublin South-West FG Dáil brophytalks M
Richard Bruton Dublin Bay North FG Dáil RichardbrutonTD M
Colm Burke Cork North-Central FG Dáil ColmBurkeTD M
Peter Burke Longford-Westmeath FG Dáil peterburkefg M
Ciarán Cannon Galway East FG Dáil ciarancannon M
Joe Carey Clare FG Dáil joecareytd M
Simon Coveney Cork South-Central FG Dáil simoncoveney M
Michael Creed Cork North-West FG Dáil creedcnw M
Alan Dillon Mayo FG Dáil Alan_Dillon M
Paschal Donohoe Dublin Central FG Dáil Paschald M
Bernard Durkan Kildare North FG Dáil BernardDurkanTD M
Damien English Meath West FG Dáil Damien_English M
Alan Farrell Dublin Fingal FG Dáil AlanFarrell M
Frank Feighan Sligo-Leitrim FG Dáil FrankFeighan M
Charles Flanagan Laois-Offaly FG Dáil CharlieFlanagan M
Brendan Griffin Kerry FG Dáil BGriffinTD M
Simon Harris Wicklow FG Dáil SimonHarrisTD M
Martin Heydon Kildare South FG Dáil martinheydonfg M
Emer Higgins Dublin Mid-West FG Dáil EmerHigginsTD F
Heather Humphreys Cavan-Monaghan FG Dáil HHumphreysFG F
Paul Kehoe Wexford FG Dáil campaign4kehoe M
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill Dún Laoghaire FG Dáil CarrollJennifer F
Josepha Madigan Dublin Rathdown FG Dáil josephamadigan F
Helen McEntee Meath East FG Dáil HMcEntee F
Joe McHugh Donegal FG Dáil McHughJoeTD M
Ivana Bacik Dublin Bay South LAB Dáil ivanabacik F
Hildegarde Naughton Galway West FG Dáil 1Hildegarde F
Kieran O’Donnell Limerick City FG Dáil kodonnellLK M
Patrick O’Donovan Limerick County FG Dáil podonovan M
Fergus O’Dowd Louth FG Dáil Fergusodowd M
John Paul Phelan Carlow-Kilkenny FG Dáil JPPhelan M
Neale Richmond Dublin Rathdown FG Dáil nealerichmond M
Michael Ring Mayo FG Dáil NA M
David Stanton Cork East FG Dáil davidstantontd M
Leo Varadkar Dublin West FG Dáil LeoVaradkar M
Marc Ó Cathasaigh Waterford GP Dáil MarcKC_Green M
Patrick Costello Dublin South-Central GP Dáil Costellop M
Francis Noel Duffy Dublin South-West GP Dáil FNDuffy M
Neasa Hourigan Dublin Central GP Dáil neasa_neasa F
Brian Leddin Limerick City GP Dáil BrianLeddin M
Catherine Martin Dublin Rathdown GP Dáil cathmartingreen F
Steven Matthews Wicklow GP Dáil stevensgreen1 M
Malcolm Noonan Carlow-Kilkenny GP Dáil noonan_malcolm M
Joe O’Brien Dublin Fingal GP Dáil joefingalgreen M
Roderic O’Gorman Dublin West GP Dáil rodericogorman M
Eamon Ryan Dublin Bay South GP Dáil EamonRyan M
Ossian Smyth Dún Laoghaire GP Dáil smytho M
Brendan Howlin Wexford LAB Dáil BrendanHowlin M
Alan Kelly Tipperary LAB Dáil alankellylabour M
Ged Nash Louth LAB Dáil geraldnash M
Aodhán Ó Rí­ordáin Dublin Bay North LAB Dáil AodhanORiordain M
Seán Sherlock Cork East LAB Dáil seansherlocktd M
Duncan Smith Dublin Fingal LAB Dáil DuncanSmithTD M
Holly Cairns Cork South-West SD Dáil HollyCairnsTD F
Gary Gannon Dublin Central SD Dáil GaryGannonTD M
Catherine Murphy Kildare North SD Dáil CathMurphyTD F
Cian O’Callaghan Dublin Bay North SD Dáil OCallaghanCian M
Róisí­n Shortall Dublin North-West SD Dáil RoisinShortall F
Jennifer Whitmore Wicklow SD Dáil WhitmoreJen F
Richard Boyd Barrett Dún Laoghaire SPBP Dáil RBoydBarrett M
Mick Barry Cork North-Central SPBP Dáil MickBarryTD M
Gino Kenny Dublin Mid-West SPBP Dáil Ginosocialist M
Paul Murphy Dublin South-West SPBP Dáil paulmurphy_TD M
Brí­d Smith Dublin South-Central SPBP Dáil bridsmithTD F
Peadar Tóibí­n Meath West AON Dáil Toibin1 M
Joan Collins Dublin South-Central I4C Dáil JoanCollinsTD F
Cathal Berry Kildare South IND Dáil BerryCathal M
Seán Canney Galway East IND Dáil SeanCanney M
Michael Collins Cork South-West IND Dáil MichaelC_IND_TD M
Catherine Connolly Galway West IND Dáil catherinegalway F
Michael Fitzmaurice Roscommon-Galway IND Dáil MichaelFitzmau1 M
Peter Fitzpatrick Louth IND Dáil PFitzpatrickTD M
Noel Grealish Galway West IND Dáil NA M
Marian Harkin Sligo-Leitrim IND Dáil MarianHarkin F
Danny Healy-Rae Kerry IND Dáil NA M
Michael Healy-Rae Kerry IND Dáil MHealyRae M
Michael Lowry Tipperary IND Dáil NA M
Mattie McGrath Tipperary IND Dáil mattiemcgrathtd M
Michael McNamara Clare IND Dáil MlMcNamaraTD M
Verona Murphy Wexford IND Dáil VeronaMurphyInd F
Denis Naughten Roscommon-Galway IND Dáil DenisNaughten M
Carol Nolan Laois-Offaly IND Dáil CNolanOffaly F
Richard O’Donoghue Limerick County IND Dáil RichardODonoghu M
Thomas Pringle Donegal IND Dáil ThomasPringleTD M
Matt Shanahan Waterford IND Dáil MattShanahanTD M
Seán Ó Fearghaí­l Kildare South CC Dáil SOFearghail_TD M
Garret Ahearn NA FG Seanad GarretAhearn M
Martin Conway NA FG Seanad conwayforclare M
Mark Daly NA FF Seanad SenatorMarkDaly M
Rebecca Moynihan NA LAB Seanad RebeccaMoy F
Niall Ó Donnghaile NA SF Seanad NiallSF M
Fiona O’Loughlin NA FF Seanad Fiona_Kildare F
Diarmuid Wilson NA FF Seanad diarmuid_wilson M
Niall Blaney NA FF Seanad niall_blaney M
Victor Boyhan NA IND Seanad BoyhanVictor M
Lynn Boylan NA SF Seanad LNBDublin F
Paddy Burke NA FG Seanad SenatorPBurke M
Paul Daly NA FF Seanad senatorpauldaly M
Michael D’Arcy NA FG Seanad MichaelDarcyTD M
Pippa Hackett NA GP Seanad pippa_hackett F
Annie Hoey NA LAB Seanad hoeyannie F
Tim Lombard NA FG Seanad voteTimLombard M
Eugene Murphy NA FF Seanad SenatorEMurphy M
Denis O’Donovan NA FF Seanad SenatorODonovan M
Malcolm Byrne NA FF Seanad malcolmbyrne M
Lisa Chambers NA FF Seanad lichamber F
Seán Kyne NA FG Seanad SeanKyneSenator M
John McGahon NA FG Seanad John_McGahon M
Fintan Warfield NA SF Seanad fintanwarfield M
Catherine Ardagh NA FF Seanad cardagh M
Frances Black NA IND Seanad frances_black F
Micheál Carrigy NA FG Seanad campaign4carrig M
Ollie Crowe NA FF Seanad olliecrowe_ie M
Aidan Davitt NA FF Seanad SenAidanDavitt M
Elisha McCallion NA SF Seanad ElishaMcC_SF F
Sharon Keogan NA IND Seanad SenatorKeogan F
Mark Wall NA LAB Seanad MarkWall1 M
Barry Ward NA FG Seanad barrymward M
Jerry Buttimer NA FG Seanad jerrybuttimer M
Pat Casey NA FF Seanad SenatorPatCasey M
Shane Cassells NA FF Seanad ShaneCassells M
Gerard Craughwell NA IND Seanad GCraughwell M
John Cummins NA FG Seanad NA M
Robbie Gallagher NA FF Seanad SenRobGallagher M
Paul Gavan NA SF Seanad paul_gavan M
Joe O’Reilly NA FG Seanad senjoeoreilly M
Pauline O’Reilly NA GP Seanad paulinegalway F
Ned O’Sullivan NA FF Seanad NedoSullivan2 M
Marie Sherlock NA LAB Seanad marie_sherlock F
Alice Mary Higgins NA IND Seanad aliceeire F
Michael McDowell NA IND Seanad SenatorMcDowell M
Rónán Mullen NA IND Seanad RonanMullen M
TBC NA NA Seanad NA NA
David Norris NA IND Seanad SenDavidNorris M
Lynn Ruane NA IND Seanad SenLynnRuane F
Lorraine Clifford-Lee NA FF Seanad LorrCliff F
Emer Currie NA FG Seanad emer_currie1 F
Regina Doherty NA FG Seanad ReginaDo F
Aisling Dolan NA FG Seanad AislingDSenator F
Timmy Dooley NA FF Seanad timmydooley M
Mary Fitzpatrick NA FF Seanad votemaryfitz F
Eileen Flynn NA IND Seanad Love1solidarity F
Róisí­n Garvey NA GP Seanad RoisinGarvey F
Vincent P. Martin NA GP Seanad VincentPMartin1 M
Mary Seery Kearney NA FG Seanad SeeryKearney F
Erin McGreehan NA FF Seanad ErinMcGreehan F
Fintan Phelan Carlow FF Local Fintan_Phelan M
Andrea Dalton Carlow FF Local Andreadaltonm M
Fergal Browne Carlow FG Local NA M
Ken Murnane Carlow FF Local NA M
Tom O’Neill Carlow FG Local NA M
John Cassin Carlow IND Local NA M
Adrienne Wallace Carlow SPBP Local AdriennePBPA F
Tommy Kinsella Muine Bheag FG Local NA M
Willie Quinn Muine Bheag LAB Local NA M
Andy Gladney Muine Bheag SF Local andy_gladney M
Michael Doran Muine Bheag FG Local NA M
Arthur McDonald Muine Bheag FF Local arthurm17237075 M
John Pender Tullow FF Local NA M
Charlie Murphy Tullow IND Local NA M
Brian O’Donoghue Tullow FG Local BrianODonoghue1 M
William Paton Tullow LAB Local NA M
John Murphy Tullow FG Local NA M
John McDonald Tullow FF Local NA M
Patricia Roe Artane-Whitehall SD Local CouncillorRoe F
Larry O’Toole Artane-Whitehall SF Local larryotoolebohs M
Racheal Batten Artane-Whitehall FF Local BattenFf F
Alison Gilliland Artane-Whitehall LAB Local AlisonGilliland F
Declan Flanagan Artane-Whitehall FG Local 1DeclanFlanagan M
John Lyons Artane-Whitehall IND Local CllrJohnLyons M
Dathí Doolan Ballyfermot-Drimnagh SF Local DaithiDoolan M
Hazel de Nortúin Ballyfermot-Drimnagh SPBP Local HazelPBP F
Vincent Jackson Ballyfermot-Drimnagh IND Local NA M
Sophie Nicoullaud Ballyfermot-Drimnagh IND Local SNicoullaud F
Daithí de Róiste Ballyfermot-Drimnagh FF Local daithideroiste M
Briege MacOscar Ballymun-Finglas FF Local BriegeMacOscar F
Noeleen Reilly Ballymun-Finglas IND Local NoeleenReilly F
Keith Connolly Ballymun-Finglas FF Local keithconnollyff M
Mary Callaghan Ballymun-Finglas SD Local MaryCallaghanSD F
Caroline Conroy Ballymun-Finglas GP Local caroline1conroy F
Anthony Connaghan Ballymun-Finglas SF Local CllrAConnaghan M
Eimer McCormack Cabra-Glasnevin FF Local CouncillorEimer NA
Darcy Lonergan Cabra-Glasnevin GP Local djlonergan F
Cat O’Driscoll Cabra-Glasnevin SD Local CllrCat F
Cieran Perry Cabra-Glasnevin IND Local PerryCieran M
Seamas McGrattan Cabra-Glasnevin SF Local SeamasMcGrattan M
Colm O’Rourke Cabra-Glasnevin FG Local colmorourke1 M
Declan Meenagh Cabra-Glasnevin LAB Local declancabra M
Damian O’Farrell Clontarf IND Local DamianOFarrell M
Donna Cooney Clontarf GP Local donna_cooney1 F
Deirdre Heney Clontarf FF Local DeirdreHeney F
Naoise Ó Muirí Clontarf FG Local naoiseomuiri F
Jane Horgan-Jones Clontarf LAB Local horganjonesjane F
Catherine Stocker Clontarf SD Local CatzStocker F
Tom Brabazon Donaghmede FF Local DublinLaw M
Daryl Barron Donaghmede FF Local DarylBarron M
Mícheál Mac Donncha Donaghmede SF Local MMacDonncha M
Terence Flanagan Donaghmede FG Local TerFlanagan M
Dearbháil Butler Donaghmede GP Local ButlerDearbhail F
Carolyn Moore Kimmage-Rathmines GP Local carolynmoore_ie F
Mary Freehill Kimmage-Rathmines LAB Local Maryfreehill1 F
Pat Dunne Kimmage-Rathmines I4C Local PatDunneI4C M
Anne Feeney Kimmage-Rathmines FG Local vote4anne F
Tara Deacy Kimmage-Rathmines SD Local taradeacy F
Deirdre Conroy Kimmage-Rathmines FF Local DeirdreConroyIE F
Janet Horner North Inner City GP Local JanetPHorner F
Christy Burke North Inner City IND Local ChristyBurkGE20 M
Joe Costello North Inner City LAB Local JoeCostelloIE M
Ray McAdam North Inner City FG Local RayMcAdam M
Nial Ring North Inner City IND Local nialring M
Janice Boylan North Inner City SF Local janice_boylan F
Anthony Flynn North Inner City IND Local AnthonyICHH M
Hazel Chu Pembroke GP Local hazechu F
James Geoghegan Pembroke FG Local GeogheganCllr M
Dermot Lacey Pembroke LAB Local LaceyDermot M
Paddy McCartan Pembroke FG Local councillorpaddy M
Claire O’Connor Pembroke FF Local ffclaireoconnor F
Claire Byrne South East Inner City GP Local CByrneGreen F
Daniel Ceitinn South East Inner City SF Local DCeitinnSF M
Danny Byrne South East Inner City FG Local DannyByrneFG M
Kevin Donoghue South East Inner City LAB Local KevinDonoghue M
Mannix Flynn South East Inner City IND Local mannixflynn M
Michael Pidgeon South West Inner City GP Local Pidge M
Darragh Moriarty South West Inner City LAB Local darragh_mor M
Tina MacVeigh South West Inner City SPBP Local TinaMacVeigh F
Michael Watters South West Inner City FF Local micwatters1 M
Críona Ní Dhálaigh South West Inner City SF Local CllrNiDhalaigh F
Séafra Ó Faoláin Blackrock GP Local SeafraBlackrock M
Marie Baker Blackrock FG Local blackrockette F
Mary Hanafin Blackrock FF Local MaryHanafin1 F
Maurice Dockrell Blackrock FG Local MauriceDockrel1 M
Kate Feeney Blackrock FF Local KateFeeneyFF F
Deirdre Kingston Blackrock LAB Local deirdrekingston F
Daniel Dunne Dundrum GP Local danieldunne M
Seán McLoughlin Dundrum IND Local NA M
Shay Brennan Dundrum FF Local ShayBrennan M
Anna Grainger Dundrum FG Local GraingerAnna F
Peter O’Brien Dundrum LAB Local CllrOBrien M
Jim O’Leary Dundrum FG Local jimdundrum M
Anne Colgan Dundrum IND Local Anne_Colgan F
Tom Kivlehan Dún Laoghaire GP Local tomkivlehan M
Justin Moylan Dún Laoghaire FF Local JustinMoylan M
Juliet O’Connell Dún Laoghaire LAB Local julietoconnell F
Mary Fayne Dún Laoghaire FG Local MaryFayneFG F
Melisa Halpin Dún Laoghaire SPBP Local MelisaHalpin F
Lorraine Hall Dún Laoghaire FG Local LorraineHallFG F
Dave Quinn Dún Laoghaire SD Local DaveQSocDemsDLR M
Lettie McCarthy Glencullen–Sandyford LAB Local Lettiemccarthy F
Oisín O’Connor Glencullen–Sandyford GP Local OConnorOisin M
Michael Fleming Glencullen–Sandyford IND Local NA M
Emma Blain Glencullen–Sandyford FG Local EmmaBlain F
Tom Murphy Glencullen–Sandyford FF Local cllrtommurphy M
Lynsey McGovern Glencullen–Sandyford IND Local LynseyMcGovern1 F
Kazi Ahmed Glencullen–Sandyford FG Local kazifinegael M
Una Power Killiney–Shankill GP Local unapower F
Carrie Smyth Killiney–Shankill LAB Local carrie_smyth F
Frank McNamara Killiney–Shankill FG Local campaign4frank M
Hugh Lewis Killiney–Shankill SPBP Local cllrhughlewis M
Jim Gildea Killiney–Shankill FG Local JimGildea2014 M
Denis O’Callaghan Killiney–Shankill LAB Local NA M
Michael Clark Killiney–Shankill FF Local michaelclark99 M
Barry Saul Stillorgan FG Local cllrbarrysaul M
Eva Elizabeth Dowling Stillorgan GP Local EvaDowling F
Maeve O’Connell Stillorgan FG Local MaeveOConnellFG F
Dónal Smith Stillorgan FF Local DonalSmithCllr M
Deirdre Donnelly Stillorgan IND Local DDonnellyInd F
John Kennedy Stillorgan FG Local JPA_Kennedy M
Tony Murphy Balbriggan IND Local TMurphyFingal M
Karen Power Balbriggan GP Local CllrKarenPower F
Seána Ó Rodaigh Balbriggan LAB Local seanaorodaigh M
Tom O’Leary Balbriggan FG Local tomoleary888 M
Gráinne Maguire Balbriggan IND Local CllrGMaguire F
Mary McCamley Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart LAB Local Cllr_MaryMcCam F
Breda Hanaphy Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart SF Local NA F
Punam Rane Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart FG Local PunamRaneFG F
John Burtchaell Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart SPBP Local BurtchaellJohn M
Freddie Cooper Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart FF Local NA M
Pamela Conroy Castleknock GP Local NA F
Siobhan Shovlin Castleknock FG Local siobhanshovlin F
Ted Leddy Castleknock FG Local TedLeddy M
John Walsh Castleknock LAB Local JohnWalshDWest M
Howard Mahony Castleknock FF Local TubaHG M
Natalie Tracey Castleknock SF Local NatalieTreacySF F
Eoghan O’Brien Howth–Malahide FF Local CllrEOB M
David Healy Howth–Malahide GP Local davidhealyv M
Joan Hopkin Howth–Malahide SD Local hopkins_joan M
Brian McDonagh Howth–Malahide LAB Local brianmcdonagh M
Jimmy Guerin Howth–Malahide IND Local jguerin11 M
Aoibhinn Tormey Howth–Malahide FG Local AoibhinnTormey F
Anthony Lavin Howth–Malahide FG Local alavin1 M
Aaron O’Rourke Ongar SF Local AaronORuaircSF M
Tania Doyle Ongar IND Local taniadoylecllr F
Tom Kitt Ongar FF Local CllrKitt M
Kieran Dennison Ongar FG Local kierandennison M
Daniel Whooley Ongar GP Local DanielWhooley M
Robert O’Donoghue Rush–Lusk LAB Local RobertodLabour M
Adrian Henchy Rush–Lusk FF Local AdrianHenchy M
Brian Dennehy Rush–Lusk FF Local NA M
Cathal Boland Rush–Lusk IND Local cathal_boland M
Paul Mulville Rush–Lusk SD Local paulmulv M
Darragh Butler Swords FF Local DarraghButler M
Dean Mulligan Swords I4C Local CllrDeanMull M
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Michael Murphy Limerick City East FG Local michael_murphy3 M
Michael Sheahan Limerick City East FG Local CllrSheahan M
Jerry O’Dea Limerick City East FF Local JerryODea M
Sarah Kiely Limerick City East FG Local sarahleekiely F
Frankie Daly Limerick City North IND Local Cllrfrankiedaly M
Saša Novak Uí Chonchúir Limerick City North GP Local sasanovak48 F
Kieran O’Hanlon Limerick City North FF Local NA M
Olivia O’Sullivan Limerick City North FG Local oliviaos F
John Costelloe Limerick City North SF Local costelloe_john M
Conor Sheehan Limerick City North LAB Local ConorSheehan93 M
Sharon Benson Limerick City North SF Local shrnbenson F
James Collins Limerick City West FF Local jamesjcollins M
Daniel Butler Limerick City West FG Local DanielButlerFG M
Joe Leddin Limerick City West LAB Local JLeddin M
Fergus Kilcoyne Limerick City West IND Local NA M
Abul Kalam Azad Talukder Limerick City West FF Local AzadTalukder_FF M
Dan McSweeney Limerick City West FG Local cllrmcsweeney M
Elisa O’Donovan Limerick City West IND Local elisaodonovan F
Andy Moloney Cahir IND Local NA M
Marie Murphy Cahir FG Local cllrmariemurphy F
Máirín McGrath Cahir IND Local MawMcGrath F
Micheál Anglim Cahir FF Local NA M
Imelda Goldsboro Carrick-on-Suir FF Local GoldsboroImelda F
David Dunne Carrick-on-Suir SF Local thesuir M
Mark Fitzgerald Carrick-on-Suir FG Local FitzgeraldCllr M
Kevin O’Meara Carrick-on-Suir IND Local NA M
Kieran Bourke Carrick-on-Suir FF Local KBourkeNo1 M
Michael Fitzgerald Cashel–Tipperary FG Local NA M
Roger Kennedy Cashel–Tipperary FF Local rogerke14343077 M
Mary Hanna-Hourigan Cashel–Tipperary FG Local NA F
Declan Burgess Cashel–Tipperary FG Local DeclanBurgess M
John Crosse Cashel–Tipperary FG Local NA M
Tony Black Cashel–Tipperary SF Local TonyBlackTipp M
Annemarie Ryan Cashel–Tipperary IND Local NA F
Michael Murphy Clonmel FG Local cllrmmurphytipp M
Siobhán Ambrose Clonmel FF Local Siobhan_Ambrose F
Pat English Clonmel WUA Local NA M
Declan Fitzgerald Clonmel FG Local NA M
Richie Molloy Clonmel IND Local cllr_molloy M
Niall Dennehy Clonmel IND Local NA M
Joe Hannigan Nenagh IND Local NA M
Michael O’Meara Nenagh IND Local NA M
Gerard Darcy Nenagh FG Local GerDarcy1 M
Séamus Morris Nenagh IND Local Nenaghman M
Hughie McGrath Nenagh IND Local NA M
Fiona Bonfield Newport LAB Local FionaBonfield F
John McGrath Newport IND Local NA M
Phyll Bugler Newport FG Local BuglerPhyll F
John Carroll Newport FF Local NA M
Michael Smith Roscrea–Templemore FF Local michaelsmithff M
Noel Coonan Roscrea–Templemore FG Local Noel_Coonan M
Shane Lee Roscrea–Templemore IND Local ShaneLe07012652 M
Eddie Moran Roscrea–Templemore IND Local NA M
Micheál Lowry Thurles IND Local NA M
Séamus Hanafin Thurles FF Local seamushanafin M
Peter Ryan Thurles FG Local PeterRyan_ire M
Jim Ryan Thurles IND Local CLLRJIMRYAN M
Seán Ryan Thurles FF Local NA M
Damien Geoghegan Dungarvan FG Local damiengeoghegan M
Tom Cronin Dungarvan FF Local NA M
Pat Nugent Dungarvan FG Local NA M
Conor D. McGuinness Dungarvan SF Local McGuinnessConor M
Séamus O’Donnell Dungarvan IND Local NA M
Thomas Phelan Dungarvan LAB Local thomasphelan M
John Pratt Lismore LAB Local VoteJohnPratt M
James Tobin Lismore FF Local NA M
Declan Doocey Lismore FG Local NA M
Seánie Power Portlaw–Kilmacthomas FG Local NA M
Liam Brazil Portlaw–Kilmacthomas FG Local cllrlbrazil M
John O’Leary Portlaw–Kilmacthomas FF Local cllrjohnoleary M
Ger Barron Portlaw–Kilmacthomas LAB Local NA M
Declan Clune Portlaw–Kilmacthomas IND Local Declan_Clune M
Susan Gallagher Tramore–Waterford City West GP Local sugallagher2 F
Joe Conway Tramore–Waterford City West IND Local CllrJoeConway M
Lola O’Sullivan Tramore–Waterford City West FG Local NA F
Joe Kelly Tramore–Waterford City West IND Local joekellyInd M
Éamon Quinlan Tramore–Waterford City West FF Local EJQuinlan M
Jim Griffin Tramore–Waterford City West SF Local NA M
Mary Roche Waterford City East IND Local maryroche F
David Daniels Waterford City East IND Local NA M
Eddie Mulligan Waterford City East FF Local MulliganEddie M
Adam Wyse Waterford City East FF Local adamgarywyse M
Jody Power Waterford City East GP Local jodypower F
Pat Fitzgerald Waterford City East SF Local NA M
John Hearne Waterford City South SF Local NA M
John Cummins Waterford City South FG Local NA NA
Dónal Barry Waterford City South IND Local NA M
Jason Murphy Waterford City South FF Local JasonMurphyFF M
Séamus Ryan Waterford City South LAB Local seamusryan1 M
Breda Brennan Waterford City South SF Local NA M
Mike Cubbard Galway City Central IND Local Mcubbard M
Imelda Byrne Galway City Central FF Local ImeldaByrne2019 F
Eddie Hoare Galway City Central FG Local EddieHoareFG M
Frank Fahy Galway City Central FG Local CllrFrankFahy M
Martina O’Connor Galway City Central GP Local MartinaGp5 M
Colette Connolly Galway City Central IND Local NA F
Declan McDonnell Galway City East IND Local NA M
Terry O’Flaherty Galway City East IND Local NA M
Alan Cheevers Galway City East FF Local AlanCheeversFF M
Michael Crowe Galway City East FF Local mike_mjcrowe M
Noel Larkin Galway City East IND Local NA M
Owen Hanley Galway City East SD Local OwenHanleyLives M
Donal Lyons Galway City West IND Local NA M
Niall Murphy Galway City West GP Local niallgalway M
Níall McNelis Galway City West LAB Local niall_mcnelis M
Peter Keane Galway City West FF Local PeterKeaneGAL M
Clodagh Higgins Galway City West FG Local CloHiggins F
John Connolly Galway City West FF Local CllrJConnolly M
James Charity Athenry–Oranmore IND Local jamescharity14 M
Albert Dolan Athenry–Oranmore FF Local albertdolan_ M
Jim Cuddy Athenry–Oranmore IND Local NA M
Gabe Cronnelly Athenry–Oranmore IND Local CllrCronnelly M
David Collins Athenry–Oranmore FG Local NA M
Liam Carroll Athenry–Oranmore FG Local NA M
Shelly Herterich-Quinn Athenry–Oranmore FF Local CllrShellyHQ F
Tim Broderick Ballinasloe IND Local TweetBroderick M
Michael Connolly Ballinasloe FF Local NA M
Dermot Connolly Ballinasloe SF Local NA M
Peter Keaveney Ballinasloe FG Local NA M
Declan Geraghty Ballinasloe IND Local NA M
Evelyn Francis Parsons Ballinasloe IND Local CllrDrEParsons F
Thomas Welby Connemara North IND Local welbysgala M
Eileen Mannion Connemara North FG Local EileenMannion1 F
Gerry King Connemara North FF Local NA M
Séamus Walsh Connemara North FF Local NA M
Pádraig Mac an Iomaire Connemara South FG Local NA M
Noel Thomas Connemara South FF Local noelgthomas M
Dáithí Ó Cualáin Connemara South FF Local cualain_o M
Alastair McKinstry Connemara South GP Local amckinstry M
Tomás Ó Curraoin Connemara South IND Local NA M
Joe Byrne Gort–Kinvara FG Local JoeByrne8 M
P.J. Murphy Gort–Kinvara FG Local NA M
Martina Kinane Gort–Kinvara FF Local NA F
Gerry Finnerty Gort–Kinvara FF Local Cllr_GFinnerty M
Geraldine Donoghue Gort–Kinvara IND Local NA F
Michael Maher Loughrea FG Local MoegieMaher M
Jimmy McClearn Loughrea FG Local jimmymcclearn M
Shane Curley Loughrea FF Local CurleyShane M
Ivan Canning Loughrea FF Local IvanCanning M
Pat Hynes Loughrea IND Local cllrpathynes M
Pete Roche Tuam FG Local Pete_Roche_FG M
Donagh Mark Killilea Tuam FF Local donagh_mark M
Joe Sheridan Tuam FF Local joesheridangcc M
Mary Hoade Tuam FF Local cllrmaryhoade F
Andrew Reddington Tuam FG Local AndrewRedd3 M
Colm Keaveney Tuam FF Local NA M
Karey McHugh Tuam IND Local NA M
Paddy O’Rourke Ballinamore FF Local paddyleitrim M
Caillian Ellis Ballinamore FF Local NA M
Brendan Barry Ballinamore SF Local BDeBarra M
Ita Reynolds-Flynn Ballinamore FG Local ItaCllr F
Enda McGloin Ballinamore FG Local NA NA
Gerry Dolan Ballinamore IND Local NA M
Seán McGowan Carrick-on-Shannon FF Local NA M
Enda Stenson Carrick-on-Shannon IND Local NA M
Thomas Mulligan Carrick-on-Shannon FG Local NA M
Finola Armstrong-Maguire Carrick-on-Shannon FG Local NA F
Paddy Farrell Carrick-on-Shannon FF Local NA M
Des Guckian Carrick-on-Shannon IND Local NA M
Mary Bohan Manorhamilton FF Local NA F
Pádraig Fallon Manorhamilton SF Local padraig_fallon M
Justin Warnock Manorhamilton FF Local NA M
Frank Dolan Manorhamilton FG Local FrankDolanFG M
Felim Gurn Manorhamilton IND Local FelimGurn M
Seán MacDermott Manorhamilton FG Local NA M
John O’Hara Ballina FG Local NA M
Mark Duffy Ballina IND Local markduffymayo M
Annie May Reape Ballina FF Local NA F
Michael Loftus Ballina FF Local NA M
Séamus Weir Ballina IND Local weir_seamus M
Jarlath Munnelly Ballina FG Local NA M
Gerry Coyle Belmullet FG Local NA M
Paul McNamara Belmullet FF Local NA M
Seán Carey Belmullet FF Local NA M
Michael Kilcoyne Castlebar IND Local NA M
Blackie Gavin Castlebar FF Local NA M
Al McDonnell Castlebar FF Local NA M
Ger Deere Castlebar FG Local GerDeere M
Cyril Burke Castlebar FG Local NA M
Martin McLoughlin Castlebar FF Local NA M
Donna Sheridan Castlebar FG Local NA F
Patsy O’Brien Claremorris FG Local NA M
Richard Finn Claremorris IND Local NA M
Damien Ryan Claremorris FF Local NA M
John Cribbin Claremorris FG Local NA M
Michael Burke Claremorris FG Local NA M
Tom Connolly Claremorris FG Local NA M
Gerry Murray Swinford SF Local GerryMurraySF M
Michael Smyth Swinford FF Local NA M
Neil Cruise Swinford FG Local neilcruisefg M
John Caulfield Swinford FF Local NA M
Christy Hyland Westport IND Local brendanmulroy1 M
Peter Flynn Westport FG Local FlynnPeter1 M
Brendan Mulroy Westport FF Local VoteMulroy1 M
John O’Malley Westport IND Local NA M
Tony Ward Athlone (Roscommon) IND Local NA M
Ivan Connaughton Athlone (Roscommon) IND Local ConnaughtonIvan M
John Naughten Athlone (Roscommon) FG Local NA M
John Keogh Athlone (Roscommon) FF Local NA M
Dónal Kilduff Athlone (Roscommon) IND Local NA M
Laurence Fallon Athlone (Roscommon) IND Local NA M
John Cummins Boyle FF Local NA M
Valerie Byrne Boyle IND Local CllrValByrne F
Michael Mulligan Boyle SF Local NA M
Tom Crosby Boyle IND Local cllrtomcrosby M
Liam Callaghan Boyle FG Local VoteLiamNo1 M
Joe Murphy Boyle FF Local NA M
Paschal Fitzmaurice Roscommon FF Local NA M
Kathleen Shanagher Roscommon IND Local NA F
Anthony Waldron Roscommon IND Local CllrAnthonyW M
Orla Leyden Roscommon FF Local OrlaLeyden F
Marty McDermott Roscommon FF Local NA M
Nigel Dineen Roscommon IND Local NA M
Paul Taylor Ballymote–Tubbercurry FF Local PaulTay84891806 M
Joe Queenan Ballymote–Tubbercurry IND Local NA M
Michael Clarke Ballymote–Tubbercurry IND Local ClarckMichael M
Dara Mulvey Ballymote–Tubbercurry FG Local GmDara M
Gerard Mullaney Ballymote–Tubbercurry FG Local NA M
Martin Baker Ballymote–Tubbercurry FF Local NA M
Martin Connolly Ballymote–Tubbercurry FG Local NA M
Thomas Healy Sligo–Drumcliff SF Local NA M
Dónal Gilroy Sligo–Drumcliff FF Local DonalGilroy M
Thomas Walsh Sligo–Drumcliff FG Local walshthomasf M
Marie Casserly Sligo–Drumcliff IND Local Marie_Casserly F
Tom Fox Sligo–Drumcliff FG Local fox_local M
Declan Bree Sligo–Strandhill I4C Local Declan_Bree M
Tom MacSharry Sligo–Strandhill FF Local TomMacSharry M
Rosaleen O’Grady Sligo–Strandhill FF Local NA F
Arthur Gibbons Sligo–Strandhill SF Local NA M
Sinéad Maguire Sligo–Strandhill FG Local sineadmaguire F
Gino O’Boyle Sligo–Strandhill SPBP Local ginopbpsligo M
Sarah O’Reilly Bailieborough–Cootehill AON Local sarahreilly30 F
Val Smith Bailieborough–Cootehill FG Local NA M
Clifford Kelly Bailieborough–Cootehill FF Local NA M
Carmel Brady Bailieborough–Cootehill FG Local NA F
Aiden Fitzpatrick Bailieborough–Cootehill FF Local NA M
Paddy McDonald Bailieborough–Cootehill SF Local NA M
Trevor Smith Ballyjamesduff FG Local NA M
Shane P. O’Reilly Ballyjamesduff IND Local cccshanep M
T.P. O’Reilly Ballyjamesduff FG Local NA M
Winston Bennet Ballyjamesduff FG Local NA M
Phillip Brady Ballyjamesduff FF Local NA M
Craig Lovett Ballyjamesduff FF Local NA M
John Paul Feeley Cavan–Belturbet FF Local JohnPaulFeeley M
Brendan Fay Cavan–Belturbet IND Local CouncillorCo M
Madeleine Argue Cavan–Belturbet FG Local NA F
Patricia Walsh Cavan–Belturbet FF Local NA F
Sean Smith Cavan–Belturbet FF Local CllrSeanSmith M
Peter McVitty Cavan–Belturbet FG Local ClrPeterMcVitty M
Paul Canning Buncrana FF Local NA M
Rena Donaghey Buncrana FF Local NA F
Jack Murray Buncrana SF Local jackm440 M
Nicholas Crossan Buncrana IND Local CrossanNich M
Terry Crossan Buncrana SF Local NA M
Martin McDermott Carndonagh FF Local mart0017 M
Martin Farren Carndonagh LAB Local NA M
Albert Doherty Carndonagh SF Local NA M
Bernard McGuinness Carndonagh FG Local NA M
Niamh Kennedy Donegal IND Local kennedyniamhm M
Noel Jordan Donegal SF Local NA M
Micheál Naughton Donegal FF Local Michael95630822 M
Barry Sweeny Donegal FG Local NA M
Tom Conaghan Donegal IND Local NA M
Michael McMahon Donegal SF Local NA M
Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig Glenties IND Local NA M
John Sheamuis Ó Fearraigh Glenties SF Local JohnSheamaisSF M
Máire Therese Gallagher Glenties SF Local NA F
Noreen McGarvey Glenties FF Local NA F
Michael McClafferty Glenties FG Local NA M
Anthony Molloy Glenties FF Local AnthonyMolloy92 M
Ciaran Brogan Letterkenny FF Local CiaranBroganff M
Jimmy Kavanagh Letterkenny FG Local JimmyK123 M
Michael McBride Letterkenny IND Local Mich_McBride M
Dónal Coyle Letterkenny FF Local DCoyle2019 M
Kevin Bradley Letterkenny IND Local NA M
Donal Kelly Letterkenny FF Local NA M
Gerry McMonagle Letterkenny SF Local gerrymac111 M
Martin Harley Lifford–Stranorlar FG Local Cllrharley M
Patrick McGowan Lifford–Stranorlar FF Local CllrMcGowan M
Gary Doherty Lifford–Stranorlar SF Local GaryDoc M
Gerry Crawford Lifford–Stranorlar FF Local NA M
Frank McBrearty Jnr Lifford–Stranorlar FG Local McbreartyJnr M
Liam Doherty Lifford–Stranorlar SF Local NA M
John O’Donnell Milford IND Local odonnelldonegal M
Liam Blaney Milford FF Local NA M
Ian McGarvey Milford IND Local CllrIanMcGarvey M
Seamus Coyle Ballybay–Clones FF Local SeamusCoyle10 M
Pat Treanor Ballybay–Clones SF Local treanor_pat M
Richard John Truell Ballybay–Clones FG Local RichardTruell M
Seán Gilliland Ballybay–Clones FG Local NA M
Hugh McElvaney Ballybay–Clones IND Local NA M
Colm Carthy Carrickmacross–Castleblayney SF Local colmcarthy M
Noel Keelan Carrickmacross–Castleblayney SF Local NA M
Aidan Campbell Carrickmacross–Castleblayney FG Local aidanhcampbell M
P. J. O’Hanlon Carrickmacross–Castleblayney FF Local NA M
Mary Kerr-Conlon Carrickmacross–Castleblayney FG Local NA F
Aoife McCooey Carrickmacross–Castleblayney FF Local aoifemccooeyff F
Cathy Bennett Monaghan SF Local ClrCathyBennett F
Seamus Treanor Monaghan IND Local seamustreanorc1 M
Raymond Aughey Monaghan FF Local raydolphinfan M
Brian McKenna Monaghan SF Local brianmckenna7 M
David Maxwell Monaghan FG Local davidmaxwell1 M
Paudge Connolly Monaghan IND Local NA M
Seán Conlon Monaghan SF Local CllrConlon M
Ciarán Cuffe Dublin GP European Parliment CiaranCuffe M
Frances Fitzgerald Dublin FG European Parliment FitzgeraldFrncs F
Clare Daly Dublin I4C European Parliment ClareDalyMEP F
Barry Andrews Dublin FF European Parliment BarryAndrewsMEP M
Colm Markey Midlands–North-West FG European Parliment ColmMarkey M
Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan Midlands–North-West IND European Parliment lukeming M
Maria Walsh Midlands–North-West FG European Parliment MariaWalshEU F
Chris MacManus Midlands–North-West SF European Parliment MacManusChris M
Seán Kelly South FG European Parliment SeanKellyMEP M
Billy Kelleher South FF European Parliment BillyKelleherEU M
Mick Wallace South I4C European Parliment wallacemick M
Grace O’Sullivan South GP European Parliment GraceOSllvn F
Deirdre Clune South FG European Parliment DeirdreCluneMEP F

Twitter mentions

This study gathered a large-scale longitudinal data set that contains public mentions (@‘s) of TDs, Senators, MEPs, County Councillors in Ireland. To initiate our data collection, we relied on the list of Twitter accounts of Irish politicians elected to the the Dáil, county council, European Parliament, Presidency or Seanad as of September 2020. We then downloaded all tweets that mention any of these politicians’ Twitter accounts directly from Twitter’s Streaming API (application programming interface) using the rtweet (Kearney 2019) package in R (R Core Team 2021). Our full data set contains a total of 3850263 tweets mentioning an Irish politician from 2020-09-19 until 2021-09-12. These tweets can be divided into two categories: 2454368 replies (tweets that directly respond to a tweet by a public representative) and 1395895 mentions (tweets that explicitly mention a legislator’s Twitter handle but are not a direct response to one of their tweets). We pool both types of tweets in our analysis. The mean number of tweets gathered per day was 15633. The mean number of tweets per day per politician was 46.96

Twitter timelines

To investigate the context of responses to a politicians tweets we also gathered the tweets posted by Irish politicians. A total of 1825824 tweets by politicians were gathered ranging from 2009-02-13 until 2021-09-12. The mean number of posts per politician over this time was 3.76. Of these posts 866403, were retweets 140785 were quote retweets and 818637 were status posts.

Estimating context of tweets using Perspective API

All tweets directed at Irish politicians were passed through the Perspective API in order to identify context of the text within each tweet. Perspective is a free API that uses machine learning to identify “Toxic” comments. Perspective define a toxic comment as one which is rude, disrespectful or unreasonable, that is likely to cause some one to leave a discussion. The perspective API is intended to be used as a filtering tool for moderators and is not a replacement for human coders of toxic text. However, considering the limited resources available to this study, tweets deemed ‘toxic’ by Perspective will be considered as such for the purposes of this analysis. A total of 2681999 tweets were passed through the perspective API and probabilities of toxicity, severe toxicity, identity attack, insult, threat, profanity, sexually explicit and flirtation were estimated. Details on each of the Perspective API models can be viewed on their website. In this analysis tweets were deemed to be toxic if their probability for the toxicity Perspective model was >=0.5. The distribution of tweets by their context is shown in figure 1. The number of tweets with a probability >= 0.5 per perspective model is summarized in table 3. As each tweet was run through each model, some tweets may have a >=0.5 probability for more than one context. Of the tweets passed through the Perspective API 835096 could be processed without error. The other tweets unfortunately could not have their context predicted due to unresolved errors.

Distribution of probabilities of context of tweets directed at politicians estimated using the Perspective API

Figure 1: Distribution of probabilities of context of tweets directed at politicians estimated using the Perspective API

Table 3: Number of tweets and proportion of all tweets with a >=0.5 probability of context determined by Perspective models
context n Proportion of tweets Proportion of valid tweets
FLIRTATION 77534 0.016 0.093
IDENTITY_ATTACK 31890 0.007 0.038
INSULT 77040 0.016 0.092
PROFANITY 42887 0.009 0.051
SEVERE_TOXICITY 26866 0.006 0.032
SEXUALLY_EXPLICIT 15842 0.003 0.019
THREAT 38200 0.008 0.046
TOXICITY 72552 0.015 0.087

Methods

For this analysis we will be using the same framework as (Theocharis et al. 2020), which was the inspiration for this analysis. (Theocharis et al. 2020) investigated the dynamics of incivility on twitter towards member of the 116th United States congress. They collected tweets over a 12 month period and had four hypotheses they wanted to test. These hypotheses are as follows

  1. Hypothesis 1 (temporality):
  • The volume of uncivil tweets targeted at politicians will be significantly higher around highly communicative events (such as election campaigns, political scandals, and major legislative debates) than during uneventful periods.
  1. Hypothesis 2 (context):
  • The volume of uncivil tweets targeted at politicians will be significantly higher in response to messages about “hard” topics such as economic and social issues.
  1. Hypothesis 3 (longevity and logic):
  • Uncivil tweeting is carried out by different users in a sporadic fashion.
  1. Hypothesis 4 (prejudice):
  • Female politicians are significantly more likely than men to receive toxic comments.

In this investigation we will look at each of these hypotheses in an Irish context.

Each hypothesis will require it’s own set of tools and analysis in order to make an assessment of each one. Further details of these tools and methods are described with each exploration of the hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1 (temporality)

Hypothesis 1 explores whether events of high incivility towards politicians on Twitter is in response to major political events such as elections, political controversies or unpopular legislative decisions. As this data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, responses to COVID related restrictions and guidelines should be included in this framework. To determine a period of significant incivility towards Irish politicians, the number of toxic tweets per day was counted and days where the number of toxic tweets exceeded twice the standard deviation of daily toxic tweets was determined to be a day of significant incivility. Periods of significant incivility were estimated for the Dáil, Seanad and county councils separately. To determine if these ‘toxic dates’ were linked to a political event. Google news was used to search those dates with the key words “Ireland,” “Ireland Government,” “Ireland Politics.”

Incivility towards members of the Dáil

Figure 2 shows the volume of toxic tweets towards TDs over a 12 month period. There were 16 periods of extreme incivility, where the number of toxic tweets directed at members of the Dáil exceeded twice the standard deviation of daily incivility. Labelled on figure 2 are the events that these periods of incivility are most likely linked to. Some of these periods of incivility lasted several days, the most notable being the controversy around the legislation on Mother and Baby homes which was debated in the Dáil between the 21st - 23rd of November 2020. Other events of high incivility were the controversy around the leaking of documents by an Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, the debate on student nurse’s pay and three events related to COVID-19 restrictions. The majority of the events of incivility occurred in 2020, with one event occurring in 2021. There is an overall decrease in incivility over the 12 month period. The drop in incivility appears to begin as COVID-19 restrictions are eased in February and March 2021. This could be indicative of people leaving the platform as they begin to move more freely in society, or social media fatigue, or a sign of a reduction in the number of major controversies by government and politicians following the January 2021 lock down.

An increase in incivility towards Irish TDs coincided with events important government events and contraversies

Figure 2: An increase in incivility towards Irish TDs coincided with events important government events and contraversies

It is evident that incivility towards Dáil members did not rise during the Dublin Bay South By-election which occurred between 2021-06-16 and 2021-07-08. However, over all engagement with politicians on the platform increased during the conduction of the By-election (figure 3)

Increase in activity with Irish politicians during an election campaign

Figure 3: Increase in activity with Irish politicians during an election campaign

Incivility towards Local Councillors

Number of civil and incivil tweets directed at County or City Councillors per day

Figure 4: Number of civil and incivil tweets directed at County or City Councillors per day

Figure 4 shows the frequency of toxic and civil tweets towards local Councillors over the 12 month period of this analysis. There were a total of 9 events of extreme incivility towards local Councillors. A search of Google news for these dates did not highlight any obvious political events to link these periods to.

Number of incivl tweets directed at individual councillors on dates of high incivility

Figure 5: Number of incivl tweets directed at individual councillors on dates of high incivility

On further investigation of toxic tweets directed at Councillors it was determined that these events mentioned individual accounts at a very high frequency (figure 5). These events were linked to three twitter accounts of local Councillors; Former Dublin Lord Mayor and Dublin City council member, Hazel Chu (hazechu), Dublin City council member Deirder Conroy (DeirdreConroyIE) and Galway City council member, Clodagh Higgins (CloHiggins). Furthermore these periods of incivility are linked to 23 Tweets by these three public representatives, indicating that the periods of incivility are as a response to Tweets. This will be explored more as part of Hypothesis 2.

While there was no evidence of an increase in incivility towards Local Councillors during the Dublin Bay South By-election, there was an overall increase in interactions with Local Councillors (figure 6). Of the candidates running in the By-election, four were Local Councillors; James Geoghan of Fine Gael, Claire Byrne of the Green Party and Deirdre Conroy of Fianna Fáil and Mannix Flynn, Non-party. As such it would be expected that there would be more interaction with local Councillors during this time period, however the lack of an increase in incivility is somewhat a rejection of the hypothesis that incivility may increase during election campaigns.

Increase in activity with towards Local Councillors during an election campaign

Figure 6: Increase in activity with towards Local Councillors during an election campaign

Incivility towards Senators

Number of civil and toxic tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time

Figure 7: Number of civil and toxic tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time

Figure 7 shows the number of toxic and civil tweets directed at members of the Seanad per day over a 12 month period. During this period there were 6 days of significant incivility. Several of these dates appear to be due to the same event. Of the political events of note, two were related to COVID-19 restrictions, two were related to controversies related to Sinn Féin (the resignation of a senator and a vote on the controversial donation to Sinn Féin by William Hampton) and one was related to Mother and Baby home legislation (figure 8). The Mother and Baby home legislation controversy, though conducted in the Dáil, appears to be an event of such salience that a high degree of incivility was directed at members in both houses of the Oirechtas.

Number of toxic tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time and the possible political events they are a response to

Figure 8: Number of toxic tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time and the possible political events they are a response to

Similar to the trend of incivility towards members of the Dáil and Local Councils, there was no increase in incivility towards members of the Seanad during the Dublin Bay South By-Election, this is despite a member of the Seanad (Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party) running and eventually winning the By-Election. There was a noted increase in civil interactions with members of the Seanad during the election, a similar trend seen towards members of the Dáil and Local Councils (figure 9).

Number of civil tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time. An increase in civil tweets occured during election campaigns, while there was no increase in incivility

Figure 9: Number of civil tweets directed at members of the Seanad over time. An increase in civil tweets occured during election campaigns, while there was no increase in incivility

Hypothesis 2 (context)

In this section we will investigate the context of incivility towards public representative. We will look at this separately for the Dáil, Seanad and Local Councillors. Tweets by politicians with a high number of toxic responses were identified and then coded to assign it’s context; coded as either ‘hard,’ ‘soft’ or ‘COVID.’ To determine if toxic responses were due to a tweet by a politician mentioning a ‘hard’ topic, hard topics had to be defined. Hard topics under (Theocharis et al. 2020) were determined if a politician tweeted about the economy, abortion rights, gun control etc. Many of these topics are not applicable to an Irish context. For this analysis topics were coded as hard, if they were directly related to the economy, healthcare, housing, jobs, climate change, pension age or other legislative decisions or social issues. Housing, healthcare, jobs, climate change, pension age and the economy etc. were selected as hard topics as these were salient topics to voters in the most recent Irish general election (2020) as measured from exit polls (Cunningham and Marsh 2021).

The most important issues and the % of respondents who said it was the most important to them is as follows.

  • Health - 33.6%
  • Housing/Homelessness - 26.8%
  • Pension age - 9.31%
  • Something else - 6.18%
  • Climate Change - 5.92%
  • Jobs - 5.79%
  • Taxation - 4.6%
  • Crime - 2.8%
  • Childcare - 2.6%
  • Brexit - 1.6%
  • Immigration - 0.7%

Any tweets mentioning these topics were coded as ‘hard’

As the data collection was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and additional coding of ‘COVID’ was assigned for tweets related to COVID issues, such as restrictions, guidelines or COVID related protests. Tweets not mentioning any of the above were coded as ‘soft.’ Partisan attacks between rival parties were not coded as ‘hard’ and instead were coded as ‘partisan’ as they are not directly linked to issues of salience, but may cause an increase in incivility towards the representative posting the tweet.

Incivil repsonses to tweets by members of the Dáil

Over the 12 month period of data collection TDs tweeted a total of 56154 tweets which were status updates and not a response to another tweet. Table 4 summarises the number of times a TD tweeted over the period of the analysis. TD Neale Richmond, tweeted the most during the period of this analysis. Six TDs tweeted less 1 tweet during the period of this analysis. A total of 1 TDs did not tweet at all during the 12 month period of this analysis.

Table 4: Number of tweets and average daily tweet count of TDs
Profile name Total Average Tweets/Day
nealerichmond 3360 9.52
AodhanORiordain 1820 5.16
Toibin1 1595 4.52
paulmurphy_TD 1550 4.39
CharlieFlanagan 1360 3.85
josephamadigan 1246 3.53
ThomasByrneTD 1073 3.04
ivanabacik 1059 3.00
JohnnyGuirke 950 2.69
EOBroin 875 2.48
SimonHarrisTD 873 2.47
ThomasPringleTD 842 2.39
DarraghOBrienTD 760 2.15
loreillysf 757 2.14
MaryLouMcDonald 728 2.06
MickBarryTD 718 2.03
QuinlivanTD 708 2.01
WhitmoreJen 707 2.00
davidcullinane 696 1.97
FrankFeighan 668 1.89
Paschald 658 1.86
Wardy1916 649 1.84
chrisandrews64 641 1.82
PaulMcauliffe 616 1.75
ciarancannon 607 1.72
DonnellyStephen 600 1.70
LeoVaradkar 600 1.70
noonan_malcolm 558 1.58
alankellylabour 554 1.57
cathmartingreen 538 1.52
MaryButlerTD 536 1.52
Donnchadhol 503 1.42
RobertTroyTD 491 1.39
AlanFarrell 490 1.39
MichealMartinTD 486 1.38
simoncoveney 478 1.35
joefla 471 1.33
BrendanSmithTD 468 1.33
GaryGannonTD 467 1.32
orourke_darren 462 1.31
PaulDonnellySF 462 1.31
mmcgrathtd 450 1.27
McHughJoeTD 439 1.24
ColmBurkeTD 430 1.22
MarcKC_Green 426 1.21
MattShanahanTD 426 1.21
Farrell_Mairead 424 1.20
mattcarthy 422 1.20
ThomasGouldSF 421 1.19
Fergusodowd 416 1.18
NiallCollinsTD 415 1.18
CarrollJennifer 414 1.17
AnneRabbitte 403 1.14
conwaywalsh 397 1.12
HHumphreysFG 386 1.09
DenisNaughten 370 1.05
kodonnellLK 368 1.04
MlMcNamaraTD 363 1.03
bridsmithTD 350 0.99
ClaireKerrane 348 0.99
OCallaghanCian 344 0.97
NiamhSmythTD 337 0.95
ReadaCronin 335 0.95
EmerHigginsTD 332 0.94
HollyCairnsTD 332 0.94
CathalCroweTD 329 0.93
DuncanSmithTD 327 0.93
neasa_neasa 326 0.92
MarianHarkin 322 0.91
geraldnash 304 0.86
jackfchambers 304 0.86
seansherlocktd 300 0.85
johnbradysf 297 0.84
Ginosocialist 290 0.82
RBoydBarrett 290 0.82
rodericogorman 285 0.81
PearseDoherty 281 0.80
podonovan 273 0.77
CathMurphyTD 266 0.75
CormacDevlin 262 0.74
EamonRyan 257 0.73
mmoynihantd 257 0.73
1Hildegarde 255 0.72
padraigosull 254 0.72
martinheydonfg 251 0.71
Costellop 247 0.70
OCallaghanJim 245 0.69
COSullivanTD 229 0.65
SorcaClarke_TD 216 0.61
JamesOConnorTD 209 0.59
BrianLeddin 201 0.57
JamesBrowneTD 194 0.55
stevensgreen1 194 0.55
RichardbrutonTD 187 0.53
MichaelC_IND_TD 179 0.51
PadraigMacL 178 0.50
ROMurchu 178 0.50
WynneTd 178 0.50
FNDuffy 174 0.49
BernardDurkanTD 173 0.49
JohnLahart 173 0.49
joefingalgreen 172 0.49
PaulineTullyTD 169 0.48
Alan_Dillon 164 0.46
Damien_English 164 0.46
SeanCroweTD 163 0.46
CowenBarry 161 0.46
HMcEntee 160 0.45
RoisinShortall 157 0.44
lawlessj 156 0.44
SeanCanney 152 0.43
McConalogue 143 0.41
brophytalks 140 0.40
JenMurnaneOConn 138 0.39
peterburkefg 132 0.37
sean_haughey 130 0.37
smytho 128 0.36
BGriffinTD 124 0.35
MarcMacsharryTD 113 0.32
Browne4Dail 109 0.31
jackiecahillff 108 0.31
eamonocuiv 99 0.28
aosnodaigh 94 0.27
BerryCathal 92 0.26
NormaFoleyTD1 88 0.25
Kathleensf1 79 0.22
AindriasMoynih1 71 0.20
joecareytd 70 0.20
willieodeaLIVE 58 0.16
RichardODonoghu 57 0.16
campaign4kehoe 56 0.16
DMitchellTD 54 0.15
JMcGuinnessTD 54 0.15
Martin_Kenny 50 0.14
patbuckleysfme 44 0.12
CNolanOffaly 43 0.12
MHealyRae 40 0.11
creedcnw 37 0.10
davidstantontd 35 0.10
JoanCollinsTD 31 0.09
JPPhelan 31 0.09
BrianStanleyTD 27 0.08
BrendanHowlin 25 0.07
catherinegalway 25 0.07
ImeldaMunster 23 0.07
PaulineTully2 22 0.06
PFitzpatrickTD 15 0.04
SeanFlemingTD 15 0.04
JohnnyMythenSF 7 0.02
SOFearghail_TD 7 0.02
daracalleary 6 0.02
mattiemcgrathtd 1 0.00
MichaelFitzmau1 1 0.00
VeronaMurphyInd 1 0.00

Of the 56154 tweets by TDs, a total of 7739 tweets received at least one toxic response and 205 received more than 10 toxic responses. The following interactive table summarises the tweets by TDs that received more than 10 toxic responses.

To gain an understanding of how we will code the tweets which received toxic responses lets look at a few examples. We will look the the top 5 tweets by number of total toxic interactions. The tweet which received the greater number of toxic responses was a tweet by Minister Roderic O’Gorman on legislation regarding Mother and Baby homes.

As this tweet related to legislation in the Oirechtas in relationship to institutions linked to long term abuse of women and children, this tweet was coded as a ‘hard’ topic.

The following tweet by Minister Simon Harris relating to a news report on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. As this tweet didn’t relate to any topic or salience nor did it relate to any legislative issues it was coded as ‘soft.’

The next tweet by An Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was a response to COVID-19 related restrictions and was coded as ‘COVID’

Another tweet by An Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar, shown below was a comment on the relationship that Multinationals play in Ireland. This tweet was coded as ‘hard’ due to it’s comment on economic issues. This tweet is also an example of a partisan tweet (i.e. a direct criticism of one Political Party by a member of another). Tweets that were partisan, but did not contain any comment on salient issues were coded as ‘partisan.’

As a final example is the following tweet by Minister Simon Coveney wishing good luck to the England football team in the Euro 2020 championship. This tweet was coded as ‘soft’ as it did not relate to any issue of salience or legislative debate.

All tweets that received 10 or more toxic responses were coded as ‘hard,’ ‘soft,’ ‘partisan’ or ‘COVID.’ A total of 205 tweets received more than 10 toxic responses. Figure 10 shows the distribution of the number of toxic responses that tweets in each coding received. Hard topics received the greatest number of toxic responses on average and the mean toxic responses to ‘hard’ topics was significantly different (P<0.01) to ‘soft’ topic tweets and to ‘COVID’ topics (P<0.01). Partisan tweets had the second highest rate of toxic responses after hard topics.

Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by members of the Dáil

Figure 10: Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by members of the Dáil

Figure 11 shows the number of tweets by TDs that received more that 10 toxic responses, grouped by the type of topic. An Tánaiste Leo Varadkar had the greatest number of tweets that received more than 10 toxic responses, with a relatively even number of tweets of each type.

Number of tweets from TDs by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Figure 11: Number of tweets from TDs by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Incivil repsonses to tweets by Local Councillors

Over the 12 month period of data collection Local Councillors tweeted a total of 74440 tweets which were status updates and not a response to another tweet. Table 5 summarises the number of times a Local Councillor tweeted over the period of this analysis. Councillor Oisín O’Connor, tweeted the most during the period of this analysis. Twenty six Councillors tweeted less 1 tweet during the period of this analysis. A total of 156 Local Councillors did not tweet at all during the 12 month period of this analysis.

Table 5: Number of tweets and average daily tweet count of Local Councillors
Profile name Total Average Tweets/Day
OConnorOisin 2864 8.11
sendboyle 2463 6.98
ChrisPenderKE 2257 6.39
AnthonyICHH 1642 4.65
DanielButlerFG 1335 3.78
AlisonGilliland 1238 3.51
Fionnuala____ 1199 3.40
hazechu 1022 2.90
ConorSheehan93 968 2.74
hopkins_joan 933 2.64
elisaodonovan 862 2.44
CllrPioSmith 849 2.41
TinaMacVeigh 777 2.20
RayMcAdam 730 2.07
mcmanusdavid 716 2.03
Tfitzgeraldcork 711 2.01
kenegan30 680 1.93
CllrFionaRyan 669 1.90
declancabra 669 1.90
shanemoynihan 665 1.88
HazelPBP 659 1.87
donna_cooney1 656 1.86
maryroche 645 1.83
janice_boylan 644 1.82
MauriceDockrel1 626 1.77
seamusryan1 621 1.76
deirdreforde 619 1.75
naoiseomuiri 619 1.75
OwenHanleyLives 605 1.71
DaithiDoolan 579 1.64
GeogheganCllr 575 1.63
MulliganEddie 574 1.63
Marie_Casserly 572 1.62
davidgilroyBVT 571 1.62
AlanHayesDublin 569 1.61
CllrOBrien 536 1.52
TheKavOfficial 513 1.45
McManusDavid 493 1.40
sfaysocialist 493 1.40
Tri2bResponsibl 492 1.39
damiengeoghegan 465 1.32
seanaorodaigh 451 1.28
DamianBoylanFG 419 1.19
DollardMaria 418 1.18
Joekavanaghcork 413 1.17
jmaher0 406 1.15
unapower 400 1.13
Pidge 399 1.13
fionamacky 394 1.12
johnpauloshea1 389 1.10
JanetPHorner 386 1.09
Raemmu 380 1.08
DanielWhooley 375 1.06
MichelleeHall 365 1.03
darragh_mor 364 1.03
CllrShellyHQ 361 1.02
DeirdreConroyIE 359 1.02
oliviaos 359 1.02
GraingerAnna 349 0.99
CllrDeanMull 341 0.97
EddieHoareFG 341 0.97
CllrKarenPower 338 0.96
Drsusancrawford 337 0.95
DarraghButler 325 0.92
joannatuffy 324 0.92
cllrkmac 321 0.91
Nenaghman 321 0.91
Lettiemccarthy 317 0.90
SharingWithYemi 315 0.89
oliver_moran 311 0.88
LiamQuaide 307 0.87
billclear45 303 0.86
CatzStocker 296 0.84
MeathRight2Life 296 0.84
keithconnollyff 289 0.82
LaceyDermot 281 0.80
jimdundrum 280 0.79
PunamRaneFG 280 0.79
walshthomasf 279 0.79
AaronORuaircSF 272 0.77
Aidan_Farrelly_ 269 0.76
cllrmsheehan 267 0.76
EmmettOBrienIND 267 0.76
djlonergan 262 0.74
AdrianHenchy 259 0.73
CByrneGreen 259 0.73
julietoconnell 258 0.73
LOTooleLucan 258 0.73
CloHiggins 256 0.73
ColetteFinnCork 256 0.73
Alanfromireland 250 0.71
carolynmoore_ie 250 0.71
aoifemccooeyff 248 0.70
BrianODonoghue1 247 0.70
CllrGMaguire 247 0.70
sugallagher2 245 0.69
brianmcdonagh 242 0.69
IreneWinters 242 0.69
LourdaScott 240 0.68
CllrCat 239 0.68
TedLeddy 237 0.67
CllrFranTimmons 231 0.65
LornaBogue 230 0.65
SeanMartinFF1 221 0.63
CllrJConnolly 219 0.62
michaelclark99 218 0.62
cllremcoffey 213 0.60
caroline1conroy 211 0.60
sharontolan 210 0.59
VeralouiseB 200 0.57
CllrCarlyBailey 196 0.56
onein7bn 196 0.56
alavin1 191 0.54
tomoleary888 189 0.54
LorraineHallFG 188 0.53
Mcubbard 188 0.53
cllrawatters 187 0.53
BurtchaellJohn 183 0.52
ChapCleere 180 0.51
MikeySheehyJnr 180 0.51
PadraigMcEvoy 174 0.49
DrLauraDonaghy 167 0.47
mike_mjcrowe 167 0.47
Jackie_HealyRae 166 0.47
fionnanfitzger1 165 0.47
CllrMickDuff 162 0.46
EdOBrien1 162 0.46
JohnPaulFeeley 162 0.46
BattenFf 159 0.45
CllrDesCahil 156 0.44
siobhanshovlin 156 0.44
CllrJohnLyons 155 0.44
AislingforMeath 151 0.43
amckinstry 151 0.43
JimmyMoloney 151 0.43
cllrglawlor 150 0.42
liam_bs 149 0.42
JohnSheridanFF 148 0.42
SNicoullaud 147 0.42
AlanOC_Green 145 0.41
trevorgilligan 143 0.41
Fintan_Phelan 142 0.40
sasanovak48 142 0.40
DeirdreKellyFF 140 0.40
niallgalway 140 0.40
JLeddin 137 0.39
JimmyK123 136 0.39
thesuir 134 0.38
CathalEByrne 133 0.38
cllrbarrysaul 133 0.38
colmcarthy 133 0.38
DeirdreHeney 133 0.38
ffclaireoconnor 132 0.37
cllrjamesbyrne 130 0.37
CarlyEBailey_ 129 0.37
breandanfitz 128 0.36
KevinDonoghue 128 0.36
sarahreilly30 128 0.36
DeclanBurgess 126 0.36
MartinaGp5 126 0.36
bottykillarney 123 0.35
jfox19 122 0.35
carrie_smyth 120 0.34
CllrGleeson 120 0.34
CllrEoinOBroin 119 0.34
joeneville2010 119 0.34
humphreys 118 0.33
ladublinoise 117 0.33
liammaddenfg 117 0.33
votefeeney1 117 0.33
mickfinn01 116 0.33
ormondpeter 114 0.32
JoeCostelloIE 112 0.32
danieldunne 111 0.31
CllrEOB 109 0.31
GmDara 107 0.30
electbarbaraann 106 0.30
HazelSmyth2019 104 0.29
markduffymayo 104 0.29
LeonardKelly45 103 0.29
cllr_molloy 102 0.29
listonv 102 0.29
louheavin 102 0.29
Robbie_Power 101 0.29
EileenMannion1 100 0.28
ConorGBergin 99 0.28
BriegeMacOscar 96 0.27
blackrockette 94 0.27
DeirdreGSmith 94 0.27
shellyhetch 94 0.27
seanohartigan 93 0.26
cllr_twomey 92 0.26
MaeveOConnellFG 92 0.26
JohnWalshDWest 91 0.26
PaulBell1971 91 0.26
CarmelMarieK 89 0.25
MarkLeigh76 89 0.25
vickicasserly 89 0.25
Daizobrien 88 0.25
SeafraBlackrock 88 0.25
EdgeIndependent 87 0.25
TMurphyFingal 87 0.25
DamienPOReilly 86 0.24
NoeleenReilly 86 0.24
horganjonesjane 84 0.24
BrigidManton 82 0.23
osully1967 82 0.23
tcos1804 82 0.23
CllrJoannaByrne 81 0.23
CllrShaneOC 81 0.23
MawMcGrath 81 0.23
larryotoolebohs 80 0.23
CllrMickNugent 79 0.22
PerryCieran 79 0.22
CouncillorRoe 75 0.21
MissErikaDoyle 75 0.21
PaddyHolohanMMA 75 0.21
Cllrfrankiedaly 74 0.21
MaryHoward2009 74 0.21
CllrTomF 72 0.20
jamescharity14 72 0.20
johnclendennen 72 0.20
EvieSammon 70 0.20
cathal_foley 69 0.20
jackm440 69 0.20
karencoakleycc 66 0.19
GaryDoc 64 0.18
KelleherColm 64 0.18
Scarteen 64 0.18
taniadoylecllr 64 0.18
AlanCheeversFF 63 0.18
AdriennePBPA 62 0.18
DDonnellyInd 62 0.18
KMahon_Cllr 62 0.18
padraig_fallon 62 0.18
cllrmcollins 60 0.17
eileenlynch55 60 0.17
andreamckevitt 59 0.17
colmorourke1 59 0.17
KateFeeneyFF 59 0.17
JPA_Kennedy 57 0.16
DarylBarron 56 0.16
normamoriarty 55 0.16
Cllr_Gerry 54 0.15
kennedyniamhm 54 0.15
kennethnoflynn 54 0.15
McGrathSeamus 54 0.15
SeamasMcGrattan 54 0.15
ColmKennyGreen 53 0.15
CllrConlon 52 0.15
FfBridie 52 0.15
CllrElaine 51 0.14
EmmaBlain 51 0.14
davidhealyv 50 0.14
PaulGogarty 50 0.14
CllrMarianne 47 0.13
marciadalton 47 0.13
MrPaddyMeade 47 0.13
cllrkenglynn 45 0.13
thomasina_laois 44 0.12
IndJoeBehan 42 0.12
paulmulv 42 0.12
SarahReillyFG 42 0.12
EvaDowling 41 0.12
LIAMOC2014 40 0.11
CllrNoel 39 0.11
CllrSeanKelly 39 0.11
DrMagsCrean 39 0.11
ElenaSecas 39 0.11
guss_connell 39 0.11
naoiseoc 39 0.11
fennessy_edward 38 0.11
Andreadaltonm 37 0.10
clareclaffey 37 0.10
Shea7Tony 37 0.10
AnthonyMolloy92 36 0.10
CllrJohnMullen 36 0.10
CllrAnthonyW 35 0.10
BrayMike 33 0.09
ButlerDearbhail 33 0.09
CllrDrEParsons 33 0.09
stephenmckeeff 33 0.09
CllrAConnaghan 32 0.09
CllrSeanDrew 32 0.09
micwatters1 32 0.09
davidfitzg 31 0.09
JimGildea2014 31 0.09
McMahon_Ronan 31 0.09
Anne_Colgan 30 0.08
cllrmmurphytipp 30 0.08
CllrSeanSmith 29 0.08
nialring 29 0.08
PaulRoss01 29 0.08
cllrkatiemurphy 28 0.08
JerryODea 28 0.08
kazifinegael 28 0.08
shrnbenson 28 0.08
tomkivlehan 28 0.08
GarretKelleher 27 0.08
jamesjcollins 27 0.08
madeleineswp 27 0.08
CllrDolores 26 0.07
CllrFlynn 26 0.07
AudreyBuckleyFF 25 0.07
CurleyShane 25 0.07
ODonovanDeirdre 25 0.07
sarahleekiely 25 0.07
ImeldaByrne2019 23 0.07
SusanMcCarthyFG 23 0.07
VoteMulroy1 23 0.07
bernardmoyniha4 22 0.06
RonanMooreSocD 22 0.06
brianlawlorcllr 21 0.06
MaryCallaghanSD 21 0.06
cllrtommurphy 20 0.06
dockerdooley1 20 0.06
MelanieBrayWest 20 0.06
NatalieTreacySF 20 0.06
niall_mcnelis 20 0.06
cllrfrankoflynn 19 0.05
cllrpaulmccabe 19 0.05
daithideroiste 19 0.05
barntickfarm 18 0.05
costelloe_john 18 0.05
Deecul 18 0.05
DeclanHurley 17 0.05
DeeBee88427929 16 0.05
JustinMoylan 16 0.05
treanor_pat 16 0.05
Briandooley26 15 0.04
DonalSmithCllr 15 0.04
ginopbpsligo 15 0.04
maryrdes 15 0.04
ShayBrennan 15 0.04
cllrmaryhoade 14 0.04
deirdrekingston 14 0.04
dngduncan 14 0.04
DaveQSocDemsDLR 13 0.04
DCeitinnSF 13 0.04
Declan_Clune 13 0.04
donagh_mark 13 0.04
BrienPaul 12 0.03
fox_local 12 0.03
johnshaw2014 12 0.03
odonnelldonegal 12 0.03
SuzaMcEneaney 12 0.03
TerryTshannon 12 0.03
avrilcro 11 0.03
kierandennison 11 0.03
cllrmariamurphy 10 0.03
JoeGarrihy2 10 0.03
VoteJohnPratt 10 0.03
CllrAengusOrour 9 0.03
JohnRei84679288 9 0.03
NoelCillDara 9 0.03
patnow 9 0.03
AoibhinnTormey 8 0.02
careyi 8 0.02
DannyByrneFG 8 0.02
DonalGilroy 8 0.02
FitzgeraldCllr 8 0.02
JoeByrne8 8 0.02
sineadmaguire 8 0.02
AoifeFg 7 0.02
CllrTomForde 7 0.02
FrankieKeena 7 0.02
GraceMcManus2 7 0.02
kevinduffyfg 7 0.02
MelisaHalpin 7 0.02
adamgarywyse 6 0.02
albertdolan_ 6 0.02
cllrdeclanpower 6 0.02
DeirdreOBrienCC 6 0.02
EdwardTimmins2 6 0.02
McGuinnessConor 6 0.02
OrlaLeyden 6 0.02
cathal_boland 5 0.01
CllrMcGowan 5 0.01
noel_cribbin 5 0.01
VoteLiamNo1 5 0.01
cccshanep 4 0.01
CllrPaulHayes 4 0.01
EamonDooley 4 0.01
gaildunne1 4 0.01
LynseyMcGovern1 4 0.01
MarkHackett72 4 0.01
mart0017 4 0.01
Maryfreehill1 4 0.01
seamushanafin 4 0.01
taradeacy 4 0.01
tbeha 4 0.01
towserwhelan 4 0.01
CllrDolan 3 0.01
CouncillorEimer 3 0.01
CourtmacCllr 3 0.01
davidmaxwell1 3 0.01
FergalDennehy 3 0.01
FionaBonfield 3 0.01
PaschalMcEvoy 3 0.01
SlatteryCllr 3 0.01
Ted_Tynan_WP 3 0.01
yvonnecollinsff 3 0.01
fintanbrett 2 0.01
gerrymac111 2 0.01
GerryWarnock 2 0.01
JoeNewman_Cllr 2 0.01
Michael95630822 2 0.01
MickCahill18 2 0.01
NeilOFiacra 2 0.01
niallkelleher 2 0.01
seamustreanorc1 2 0.01
TaltyShane 2 0.01
thomasphelan 2 0.01
aidbrow 1 0.00
bjwyse 1 0.00
campaign4frank 1 0.00
cllr_mc 1 0.00
CllrASmith 1 0.00
CllrCarroll 1 0.00
CllrDMitchell 1 0.00
CllrKeogan 1 0.00
CllrKitt 1 0.00
cllrmariemurphy 1 0.00
colleranmolloy 1 0.00
colmfmurray 1 0.00
ConnaughtonIvan 1 0.00
JnyFlynn 1 0.00
JoeMalone086 1 0.00
johnleahyOffaly 1 0.00
mannixflynn 1 0.00
mariebmoloney 1 0.00
MickDoyleFG 1 0.00
noelgthomas 1 0.00
paddyleitrim 1 0.00
raydolphinfan 1 0.00
RichardTruell 1 0.00
RossCllr 1 0.00
ShaneLe07012652 1 0.00
shaycullen2014 1 0.00

Of the 74440 tweets by Local Councillors, a total of 2021 tweets received at least one toxic response and 32 received more than 10 toxic responses.

The following interactive table summarises the tweets by Local Councillors that received more than 10 toxic responses.

The four tweets by Local Councillors that received the greatest number of toxic responses had more toxic responses than any tweet by TDs. Two tweets by Galway Councillor Clodagh Higgins gained 540 and 142 toxic responses respectively. These tweets have since been deleted but contained the following text.

I have requested @GalwayCityCo to introduce a number of these wheelchair accessible seats around Galway. We must do better and we can do better. #inclusion #disability #BetterGalway https://t.co/9lz00Mu24H https://t.co/kSTQac6Tiu

I was recently requested by a number of parents of disabled children to bring this proposal forward to improve the experience of disabled people in our public parks. To imply that my motivation was to target homeless people is a despicable slur and personally very hurtful. https://t.co/ulOluYrDxa

Both of these tweets referred to a proposal by Councillor Higgins to introduce a style of park bench that many respondents viewed as being discriminatory towards homeless people.

Figure 12 shows the distribution of the number of toxic responses that tweets in each coding received. Soft topics received the greatest number of toxic responses on average and the mean toxic responses to ‘hard’ topics was not significantly different to ‘soft’ topic tweets or to ‘COVID’ topics. There was only one ‘partisan’ tweet posted by a Local Councillor that received more that 10 toxic responses.

Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by Local Councillors

Figure 12: Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by Local Councillors

Figure 13 shows the number of tweets by Local Councillors that received more that 10 toxic responses, grouped by the type of topic. Dublin Councillor and former Dublin Mayor Hazel Chu had the greatest number of tweets that received more than 10 toxic responses.

Number of tweets from Local Councillors by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Figure 13: Number of tweets from Local Councillors by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Incivil repsonses to tweets by members of the Seanad

Over the 12 month period of data collection Senators tweeted a total of 21765 tweets which were status updates and not a response to another tweet. Table 6 summarises the number of times a Senator tweeted over the period of this analysis. Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, tweeted the most during the period of this analysis. A total of 4 Senators did not tweet at all during the 12 month period of this analysis.

Table 6: Number of tweets and average daily tweet count of Senators
Profile name Total Average Tweets/Day
NiallSF 1866 5.29
GCraughwell 1553 4.40
conwayforclare 1057 2.99
John_McGahon 876 2.48
ErinMcGreehan 797 2.26
pippa_hackett 792 2.24
LNBDublin 781 2.21
hoeyannie 660 1.87
SenatorMarkDaly 658 1.86
barrymward 640 1.81
malcolmbyrne 574 1.63
cardagh 563 1.59
jerrybuttimer 534 1.51
SenatorEMurphy 527 1.49
senjoeoreilly 503 1.42
LorrCliff 479 1.36
ReginaDo 478 1.35
emer_currie1 475 1.35
SeeryKearney 460 1.30
votemaryfitz 419 1.19
MarkWall1 406 1.15
Fiona_Kildare 395 1.12
voteTimLombard 381 1.08
marie_sherlock 373 1.06
AislingDSenator 368 1.04
SenLynnRuane 353 1.00
aliceeire 329 0.93
paul_gavan 325 0.92
GarretAhearn 323 0.92
lichamber 322 0.91
frances_black 305 0.86
RebeccaMoy 268 0.76
RoisinGarvey 264 0.75
paulinegalway 237 0.67
ShaneCassells 235 0.67
timmydooley 218 0.62
SenatorKeogan 216 0.61
NedoSullivan2 197 0.56
campaign4carrig 167 0.47
Love1solidarity 157 0.44
SenRobGallagher 154 0.44
VincentPMartin1 153 0.43
olliecrowe_ie 152 0.43
RonanMullen 120 0.34
SeanKyneSenator 119 0.34
SenatorMcDowell 112 0.32
BoyhanVictor 109 0.31
senatorpauldaly 93 0.26
ElishaMcC_SF 90 0.25
SenatorPatCasey 62 0.18
niall_blaney 50 0.14
diarmuid_wilson 10 0.03
SenDavidNorris 8 0.02
SenAidanDavitt 2 0.01

Of the 21765 tweets by Senators, a total of 954 tweets received at least one toxic response and 17 received more than 10 toxic responses.

The following interactive table summarises the tweets by Senators that received more than 10 toxic responses.

Figure 14 shows the distribution of the number of toxic responses that tweets by Senators in each coding received. Hard topics received the greatest number of toxic responses on average and the mean toxic responses to ‘hard’ topics was not significantly different to ‘soft’ topic tweets or to ‘COVID’ topics. There was only one ‘COVID’ tweet posted by a Senators that received more that 10 toxic responses.

Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by members of the Seanad

Figure 14: Distribution of the number of toxic tweets in response to hard, soft and COVID related tweets by members of the Seanad

Figure 15 shows the number of tweets by TDs that received more that 10 toxic responses, grouped by the type of topic. Senators Lisa Chambers and Barry Ward had the joint greatest number of tweets that received more than 10 toxic responses, all of which were ‘partisan’ tweets.

Number of tweets from TDs by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Figure 15: Number of tweets from TDs by type that received >=10 toxic responses

Hypothesis 3 (longevity and logic)

Hypothesis 3 supposes that uncivil tweeting is carried out by different users in a sporadic fashion. If this is the case then the frequency of uncivil tweets per user should be near uniform (i.e. all users have the same likelihood to send a toxic tweet to a politician). Additionally there would be no shared community between users who engage in uncivil tweeting towards Irish politicians.

We can investigate whether uncivil tweeting is random and from unconnected communities by investigating the distribution of toxic tweets per user and by analyzing the friends network of users who do engage in toxic tweeting. In this section it will also be investigated whether users who engage in toxic tweeting have a tendency to support one party more than another and as such we can assume a political affiliation. A very common term referenced when engaging in Irish political discourse is that of the “Shinner bot.” Shinner bots are a reference to the supposed use of bot accounts by the Sinn Féin party that engage in coordinated and directed abuse of political rivals and journalists. The potential existence of “Shinner bots” will also be investigated in this section.

Gathering toxic account connections

To investigate whether toxic users share communities or have a political leaning, the ‘following’ list of accounts that sent five or more toxic tweets to politicians was gathered using the Twitter API. A total of 1927 accounts tweeted 5 or more toxic tweets mentioning Irish politicians. ‘Following’ lists were not gathered for all 20075 accounts that engaged in uncivil tweeting, as gathering ‘following’ lists is limited by the Twitter API. Gathering ‘following’ lists for the 1927 accounts took approximately two days to gather from the Twitter API.

Estimating if an account is a bot

To estimate the probability of an account being a bot (i.e. fake account) the tweetbotornot2 package (Kearney 2021) was used. This package takes twitter timeline information from each user and estimates the probability that each account is a bot. More details on the training of the model for tweetbotornot2 is listed on the authors Github page.

Estaimating party affiliations of accounts

To estimate the potential political affiliation of the most prolific toxic accounts (accounts that tweeted 5 or more toxic tweets), their ‘following’ list was cross referenced against the user ids of every Irish politician included in this analysis. The proportion of accounts followed by each user was calculated. Users who followed political accounts and if the prortion of those accounts that represented one party was >=50% were assumed to be political partisans for that party. This methodology for assigning political affiliation from twitter data is similar to that of Yeung et al., 2020 (Yeung, Lai, and Luo 2020) which assumed that if a user follows a candidate of one party, they only follow candidates of that party, and the respective party affiliation is attached to the user. As Yeung et al., used data from a US context, which has a two party system, the general methodology had to be altered to better suit the Irish political landscape.

Identifying communities of incivil accounts

To identify communities within the most prolific toxic accounts, network analysis was employed. The method used to identify clusters of users was the ‘leading eigenvector’ method developed by Mark Newman (Newman 2006). The leading eigenvector method works by calculating the eigenvector of the modularity matrix for the largest positive eigenvalue and then separating vertices into two community based on the sign of the corresponding element in the eigenvector. If all elements in the eigenvector are of the same sign that means that the network has no underlying community structure. Check Newman’s paper to understand why this is a good method for detecting community structure. The ‘leading eigenvector’ method was implemented using the igraph package in R (Csardi and Nepusz 2006).

Distribution of toxic tweets

Figure 16 shows the cumulative count of toxic tweets per users. As can be seen from the graph the distribution of tweets per user is not uniform, meaning that uncivil tweeting is not carried out by random users, but instead is concentrated to a small number of accounts. Of the 20075 accounts that tweeted at least one toxic tweet, 2571 accounts or 13% of accounts accounted for 50% of all toxic tweets directed at politicians.

Cumulative proportion of toxic tweets per account

Figure 16: Cumulative proportion of toxic tweets per account

Are account that tweet abuse bots?

A total of 19660 accounts were tested to determine their probability of being a bot. Only 16 accounts had a greater than 50% probability of being a bot account. This indicates that a very low number of accounts are likely bots, implying that the “Shinner bot” term is not backed by any truth, as so far as the accounts being bots are concerned. However, since data collection for this analysis was completed, 3454 accounts that had posted at least one toxic tweet no longer exist, either being deleted by the user or removed by Twitter. These removed accounts could have been removed because Twitter identified them as being fake or bot accounts, or they were removed because of the abusive tweets they posted. It is hard to tell what is the reason for these accounts no longer being in existence, without additional data which would be kept privately by Twitter. As the botRnot2 package was a community led project it is possible that it was not an applicable method for detecting fake accounts in this data set and the true number of fake accounts is closer to the number of accounts no longer in existence.

Do accounts that tweet abuse share communities and party affiliations?

Using the leading eigenvector method, 10 clusters or communities were identified within the accounts that had tweeted 5 or more toxic posts. Table 7 summarizes the number of accounts per cluster. Three clusters accounted for more that 90% of the accounts, clusters, 1,3 and 4. These three clusters also accounts for the overwhelming majority of toxic tweets and had a proportional number of tweets relative to the size of the clusters.

Table 7: Number and size of clusters from a network graph of accounts that tweeted >=5 toxic tweets directed at Irish Politicians: Identified using a leading eigenvector function
cluster n n Tweets
1 629 6944
2 3 NA
3 238 2186
4 368 3687
5 14 119
6 1 7
7 5 16
8 1 5
9 1 6
10 4 28

To characterize the clusters we can look at the political accounts that each user follows. Figure 17 shows the distribution of the percentage of political accounts users from each cluster follow. Cluster 1 is defined by the high median proportion of Sinn Féin accounts that it’s users follow. Cluster 3 defined by the high median proportion of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil accounts that it follows and cluster 4 has the highest proportion of non-party politicians that it follows.

Distribution of the % of politicians from each party that individual toxic users follow within each network cluster

Figure 17: Distribution of the % of politicians from each party that individual toxic users follow within each network cluster

Table 8 summarizes the median proportion of politicians from each major party that each user follows. For cluster 1, on average 40% of the accounts each user follows were Sinn Féin politicians. For cluster 3 on average 46% of the accounts each user follows were Fine Gael politicians and 28% were Fianna Fáil politicians. For cluster 4 on average 37% of the accounts each user followed were non-party politicians.

Table 8: Mean proportion of Political accounts followed per party per major cluster
cluster FF FG GP IND LAB SD SF SPBP
1 0.14 0.19 0.10 0.18 0.08 0.11 0.40 0.12
3 0.28 0.46 0.13 0.16 0.10 0.08 0.16 0.09
4 0.24 0.27 0.10 0.37 0.10 0.13 0.27 0.11

To measure the level of partisanship of accounts in each cluster, if more than half of the politicians a user followed were from one party they were considered partisans for that party. Figure 18 shows the percentage of partisanship within each of the major clusters. For all clusters the users within them were predominantly non-partisan. Cluster 1 had a higher rate of Sinn Féin partisanship than for other parties, Cluster 3 had a higher rate of Fine Gael partisanship than other parties and cluster 4 had a higher rate of non-party partisanship than any other party.

Percentage of party partisan accounts per network cluster

Figure 18: Percentage of party partisan accounts per network cluster

Table 9 summarizes the proportion of partisanship per major network cluster. Cluster 1 had the highest rate of Sinn Féin partisanship at 28%, cluster 3 had the highest rate of Fine Gael partisanship at 37% and cluster 4 had the highest rate of non-party partisanship at 24%.

Table 9: Proportion of Political partisanship per major cluster
cluster FF FG GP IND LAB Non-partisan SD SF SPBP
1 0.01 0.05 0.00 0.02 0.01 0.62 0.00 0.28 0.01
3 0.11 0.37 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.46 NA 0.02 0.01
4 0.03 0.08 NA 0.24 0.00 0.55 0.01 0.08 NA

As another way to classify the network clusters we can look at who the toxic tweets from each cluster are directed at. Figure 19 and table 10 shows the percentage of toxic tweets within each cluster directed at politicians from each party. For each cluster Fine Gael politicians received the highest proportion of toxic tweets. Cluster 3 had the highest rate of toxic tweets directed at Sinn Féin politicians, but only differed to the other cluster in so far as Sinn Féin were the 2nd most targeted party for toxic tweets instead of the 3rd (in the case of cluster 1 and 4).

Percentage of tweets directed at politicians from each party by each network cluster

Figure 19: Percentage of tweets directed at politicians from each party by each network cluster

Table 10: Proportion of toxic tweets directed towards politicians per party per major cluster
cluster FF FG GP IND LAB SD SF SPBP
1 0.26 0.39 0.08 0.04 0.02 0.02 0.15 0.03
3 0.20 0.38 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.24 0.04
4 0.34 0.35 0.08 0.06 0.03 0.02 0.09 0.04

Are there accounts central to communities of toxic users?

To determine whether there are central figures or accounts to each cluster we can use a measure called ‘betweeness centrality.’ This measure shows which nodes are ‘bridges’ between nodes in a network. It does this by identifying all of the shortest paths and then counting how many times each node falls on one. The larger the betweeness centrality figure the more important an individual account is to a cluster. Furthermore we can visualize central accounts by plotting every account and it’s connections and arranging this network so that the more important an account is the more centred it is on that plot. Figure 20 is a network graph of cluster 1. This cluster has two central accounts with a large number of accounts near the edge of the graph. This indicates that these two central accounts have a very high importance in this cluster as there are few account between the most central and the least central account.

Network graph of cluster 1 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Figure 20: Network graph of cluster 1 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Conversely cluster 3 (figure 21) has many more accounts with a middling betweeness centrality compared to cluster 1. Cluster 4 (figure 22) similar to cluster 3 has many more accounts with a middling betweeness centrality compared to cluster 1.

Network graph of cluster 3 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Figure 21: Network graph of cluster 3 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Network graph of cluster 4 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Figure 22: Network graph of cluster 4 shown as a betweeness centrality weighted layout

Table 11 summarizes the mean and range of betweeness centrality for each cluster. The maximum betweenenss centrality measure for cluster 1 was more than double that of cluster 4 and over three times the value for cluster 3. This indicates that the accounts central to cluster 1 are a key account to that cluster and may have a high level of influence over their followers. While the identity of these highly central accounts can be determined from the data set, to avoid any accusations that these accounts may be a cause of toxicity towards politicians, their identity will not be published as part of this analysis.

Table 11: Summary statistics of the betweeness centrality measures of accounts in each major cluster
cluster mean max sd
1 1063 57204 3855
3 746 18479 1982
4 968 30420 2982

Hypothesis 4 (prejudice)

Hypothesis 4 (prejudice) investigates whether female Irish politicians are significantly more likely than men to receive toxic tweets. This section will not only look at the direct comparison between the amount of abuse that male and female politicians receive, but will also try to account for other factors which may effect the level of abuse that individual politicians might receive, such as their level of office, the number of followers they have, whether or not they are members of a government party etc. The data used in this sections is shown in table @tab(tab:preparemodeldata).

Table 12: Data used to model the number of toxic or incivil tweets directed at Irish politicians during the 12 month period of this analysis
Name n civil tweets received n incivil tweets received Party Government level Gender Followers count
Leo Varadkar 518956 9748 FG Dáil M 424080
Micheál Martin 456775 7984 FF Dáil M 144521
Stephen Donnelly 277133 4395 FF Dáil M 75882
Mary Lou McDonald 164021 3752 SF Dáil F 162607
Simon Coveney 219639 3265 FG Dáil M 172626
Neale Richmond 155521 3091 FG Dáil M 26394
Simon Harris 110650 2294 FG Dáil M 217293
Hazel Chu 69073 2080 GP Local F 45457
Eamon Ryan 128032 1462 GP Dáil M 42988
Mick Wallace 103918 1387 I4C European Parliment M 80484
Norma Foley 88878 1218 FF Dáil F 15881
Paul Murphy 59636 1204 SPBP Dáil M 27603
Helen McEntee 43761 1202 FG Dáil F 45376
Pearse Doherty 47612 930 SF Dáil M 64812
Clodagh Higgins 13800 925 FG Local F 2122
Roderic O’Gorman 42660 851 GP Dáil M 15567
Eoin Ó Broin 56694 836 SF Dáil M 45530
Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan 39127 743 IND European Parliment M 52302
Michael McNamara 46805 638 IND Dáil M 15179
Peadar Tóibí­n 43370 584 AON Dáil M 16534
Josepha Madigan 36033 583 FG Dáil F 16751
Darragh O’Brien 97618 513 FF Dáil M 14509
Aodhán Ó Rí­ordáin 33409 481 LAB Dáil M 39188
David Cullinane 29927 480 SF Dáil M 15401
Paschal Donohoe 44924 472 FG Dáil M 66757
Holly Cairns 27979 437 SD Dáil F 32738
Alan Kelly 23608 414 LAB Dáil M 19989
Regina Doherty 23614 391 FG Seanad F 23759
Clare Daly 31963 367 I4C European Parliment F 53054
James Geoghegan 30265 345 FG Local M 3637
Anthony Flynn 18930 342 IND Local M 13927
Elisa O’Donovan 15709 341 IND Local F 7836
Louise O’Reilly 17517 328 SF Dáil F 13706
Frances Black 11158 305 IND Seanad F 20824
Billy Kelleher 12426 294 FF European Parliment M 10222
David McManus 11632 283 FG Local M 1706
Richard Boyd Barrett 18634 279 SPBP Dáil M 42857
Lynn Boylan 37281 278 SF Seanad F 25067
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill 12010 277 FG Dáil F 7209
Richard Bruton 11217 271 FG Dáil M 28650
Mick Barry 12885 265 SPBP Dáil M 9857
Deirdre Conroy 12044 260 FF Local F 3388
Matt Carthy 15034 258 SF Dáil M 23881
Róisí­n Shortall 18996 256 SD Dáil F 24236
Brí­d Smith 13738 245 SPBP Dáil F 15640
Gary Gannon 18451 244 SD Dáil M 20094
Thomas Pringle 14741 240 IND Dáil M 11251
Jim O’Callaghan 17207 238 FF Dáil M 10217
Ivana Bacik 33287 234 LAB Dáil F 27708
Lisa Chambers 10538 234 FF Seanad F 9554
Catherine Martin 35098 227 GP Dáil F 21416
Seán Kelly 10207 221 FG European Parliment M 18487
Marc MacSharry 13763 218 FF Dáil M 5710
Lynn Ruane 12138 215 IND Seanad F 35652
Gino Kenny 10385 213 SPBP Dáil M 10400
Niall Ó Donnghaile 13297 212 SF Seanad M 29460
Heather Humphreys 25232 209 FG Dáil F 16713
Michael McGrath 20901 198 FF Dáil M 12803
Paul McAuliffe 10618 194 FF Dáil M 5798
Catherine Murphy 13934 190 SD Dáil F 25165
Pádraig Mac Lochlainn 15343 189 SF Dáil M 12974
Frank Feighan 15896 185 FG Dáil M 8552
Patrick Costello 9303 173 GP Dáil M 7765
John Brady 11243 172 SF Dáil M 6374
Dermot Lacey 12017 169 LAB Local M 4400
John McGahon 8560 166 FG Seanad M 5261
Jack Chambers 13738 162 FF Dáil M 7965
Chris Andrews 9272 158 SF Dáil M 6710
Mairéad Farrell 8577 156 SF Dáil F 8478
Barry Cowen 7994 151 FF Dáil M 10607
Damien English 6374 150 FG Dáil M 14562
Mattie McGrath 8226 149 IND Dáil M 6025
Brian Stanley 2775 148 SF Dáil M 3846
Michael Healy-Rae 5710 144 IND Dáil M 18300
Timmy Dooley 8690 142 FF Seanad M 7906
Oisín O’Connor 18024 141 GP Local M 3077
Annie Hoey 4851 139 LAB Seanad F 7470
Charlie McConalogue 30187 135 FF Dáil M 9722
Niall Collins 6925 132 FF Dáil M 10277
Réada Cronin 7661 132 SF Dáil F 9650
Thomas Byrne 13765 131 FF Dáil M 12605
Catherine Connolly 9609 128 IND Dáil F 15465
Dan Boyle 15191 120 GP Local M 18945
Barry Ward 6501 119 FG Seanad M 5892
Paul Kehoe 2474 112 FG Dáil M 6860
Maria Walsh 6615 111 FG European Parliment F 15083
Emer Higgins 6651 109 FG Dáil F 3402
Alan Farrell 8609 108 FG Dáil M 7846
Maurice Quinlivan 6543 108 SF Dáil M 7249
Ciarán Cuffe 12046 102 GP European Parliment M 21277
Neasa Hourigan 11458 102 GP Dáil F 10499
Chris Pender 6124 100 SD Local M 2731
Hildegarde Naughton 14938 99 FG Dáil F 7270
Niamh Smyth 3241 99 FF Dáil F 4411
Michael Pidgeon 9933 96 GP Local M 6623
Pippa Hackett 14752 96 GP Seanad F 8661
Rose Conway-Walsh 6280 94 SF Dáil F 8153
Anne Rabbitte 14909 93 FF Dáil F 8742
Patrick O’Donovan 6486 93 FG Dáil M 7341
Malcolm Byrne 7983 92 FF Seanad M 5192
Michael McDowell 5836 90 IND Seanad M 8813
Lorraine Clifford-Lee 4074 89 FF Seanad F 8183
Ted Leddy 4705 89 FG Local M 2721
Jennifer Whitmore 10797 86 SD Dáil F 6846
Brian Leddin 12839 85 GP Dáil M 5130
Duncan Smith 8467 83 LAB Dáil M 5897
Paul Donnelly 5522 83 SF Dáil M 6469
Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire 10584 82 SF Dáil M 10951
Peter Burke 4799 82 FG Dáil M 3027
Mary Butler 12354 81 FF Dáil F 6173
Ciarán Cannon 11310 80 FG Dáil M 14240
Colm Brophy 5505 79 FG Dáil M 3680
Frances Fitzgerald 6323 79 FG European Parliment F 29856
Ollie Crowe 3249 79 FF Seanad M 1701
Rónán Mullen 3474 78 IND Seanad M 6438
Rebecca Moynihan 7096 75 LAB Seanad F 7584
Cian O’Callaghan 9922 72 SD Dáil M 8799
Owen Hanley 4293 71 SD Local M 2971
Cathal Crowe 7163 70 FF Dáil M 3114
Peter Kavanagh 6929 69 IND Local M 9685
Mark Ward 5535 68 SF Dáil M 6147
Malcolm Noonan 13819 67 GP Dáil M 4044
Robert Troy 6426 67 FF Dáil M 7902
Ossian Smyth 8132 66 GP Dáil M 6925
Elisha McCallion 1780 64 SF Seanad F 10077
Barry Andrews 5461 63 FF European Parliment M 5703
Marc Ó Cathasaigh 5186 62 GP Dáil M 3221
Cathal Berry 7494 59 IND Dáil M 4491
Darren O’Rourke 7038 59 SF Dáil M 4094
Naoise Ó Muirí 4970 58 FG Local F 3207
Brendan Griffin 2727 57 FG Dáil M 8541
Jim O’Leary 3639 57 FG Local M 1045
Jerry Buttimer 4053 56 FG Seanad M 15539
Colm Burke 3380 55 FG Dáil M 4871
Emer Currie 3260 53 FG Seanad F 3712
Éamon Ó Cuív 3271 50 FF Dáil M 12164
Emmett O’Brien 3327 50 IND Local M 2474
Fiona O’Loughlin 3191 50 FF Seanad F 4718
Ray McAdam 4072 50 FG Local M 3076
Alan Dillon 2490 49 FG Dáil M 14613
Joanna Tuffy 5239 49 LAB Local F 7143
John Burtchaell 1243 48 SPBP Local M 552
Michael Sheehan 1275 48 FF Local M 1876
Ged Nash 5078 47 LAB Dáil M 9178
Conor Sheehan 3533 46 LAB Local M 2026
Fiona McLoughlin Healy 3515 46 IND Local F 4599
Alison Gilliland 7294 45 LAB Local F 4640
Seán Sherlock 2538 44 LAB Dáil M 12446
Mary Seery Kearney 3648 42 FG Seanad F 1799
Claire Byrne 10220 40 GP Local F 6085
John Lahart 4660 40 FF Dáil M 3998
Tina MacVeigh 3670 40 SPBP Local F 4058
Lorna Bogue 4370 39 IND Local F 6371
Róisí­n Garvey 2537 39 GP Seanad F 2766
Joe McHugh 8852 38 FG Dáil M 18484
Keith Connolly 1824 37 FF Local M 1878
Willie O’Dea 4210 37 FF Dáil M 7987
Maurice Dockrell 2971 36 FG Local M 491
Ruairí­ Ó Murchú 2314 36 SF Dáil M 2244
Una Power 4685 36 GP Local F 5930
Claire Kerrane 3230 35 SF Dáil F 4150
John McGuinness 3776 35 FF Dáil M 4869
Joe O’Brien 5480 35 GP Dáil M 4477
Alice Mary Higgins 6148 34 IND Seanad F 11956
Gerard Craughwell 7264 34 IND Seanad M 10398
Eileen Flynn 5491 34 IND Seanad F 15095
Violet-Anne Wynne 2835 34 SF Dáil F 1505
Eddie Hoare 2182 33 FG Local M 2585
Fintan Warfield 1200 33 SF Seanad M NA
James Lawless 3263 33 FF Dáil M 7264
Paul Gavan 3958 33 SF Seanad M 3981
Janet Horner 4772 32 GP Local F 2516
John Paul Phelan 2890 32 FG Dáil M 7201
Pauline O’Reilly 3942 32 GP Seanad F 3224
Eugene Murphy 2133 32 FF Seanad M 4240
Cormac Devlin 3360 31 FF Dáil M 5822
Martin Heydon 2988 31 FG Dáil M 8351
Brendan Howlin 2716 30 LAB Dáil M 6178
Damien Geoghegan 3895 30 FG Local M 3978
Donna Cooney 5643 30 GP Local F 4092
Grace O’Sullivan 6242 30 GP European Parliment F 13443
Michael Clark 1777 30 FF Local M 1005
Catherine Ardagh 4183 29 FF Seanad M 4460
Charles Flanagan 6425 29 FG Dáil M 28938
Pio Smith 4777 29 LAB Local M 1181
Joan Hopkin 4615 29 SD Local M 1522
James O’Connor 4195 29 FF Dáil M 2557
Hazel de Nortúin 1993 28 SPBP Local F 1288
Kenny Egan 2643 28 FG Local M 15184
David Norris 1697 28 IND Seanad M 55959
Kieran O’Donnell 6837 27 FG Dáil M 2610
Lorraine Hall 2345 27 FG Local F 1767
Fiona Ryan 3993 26 SPBP Local F 2321
Mannix Flynn 2922 25 IND Local M 5022
Mark Daly 3369 25 FF Seanad M 6910
Des Cahill 1931 24 FG Local M 5769
Christopher O’Sullivan 4173 24 FF Dáil M 3400
Daniel Dunne 1341 24 GP Local M 1431
Fergus O’Dowd 3119 24 FG Dáil M 7482
Martin Kenny 2265 24 SF Dáil M 4202
James Browne 5123 23 FF Dáil M 4335
Joe Carey 2096 23 FG Dáil M 5793
Carolyn Moore 3422 22 GP Local F 3274
Sharon Keogan 2236 22 IND Seanad F 1223
Kathleen Funchion 2443 21 SF Dáil F 4445
Liam Quaide 1849 21 GP Local M 1591
Marie Sherlock 2951 21 LAB Seanad F 2883
Pádraig O’Sullivan 2437 21 FF Dáil M 3845
Seán Haughey 2780 21 FF Dáil M 3653
Seán Fleming 2853 21 FF Dáil M 1953
Catherine Stocker 3132 20 SD Local F 2644
Martin Conway 1911 20 FG Seanad M 2429
Dara Calleary 3412 20 FF Dáil M 13234
Emer Tóibín 1798 20 AON Local F 2015
Aaron O’Rourke 1089 19 SF Local M 1024
Niall O’Callaghan 864 19 IND Local M 1939
Karen Power 689 19 GP Local F 968
Denis Naughten 2007 19 IND Dáil M 11849
Denise Mitchell 1546 19 SF Dáil F 4143
Francis Noel Duffy 2588 19 GP Dáil M 4069
Peter Fitzpatrick 516 19 IND Dáil M 2797
Thomas Gould 3278 19 SF Dáil M 3039
Brian McDonagh 1786 18 LAB Local M 2782
Jackie Healy-Rae 1050 18 IND Local M 2739
Mary Roche 3459 18 IND Local F 7277
Saša Novak Uí Chonchúir 2502 18 GP Local F 1436
Sandra Fay 2518 18 SPBP Local F 2021
Yemi Adenuga 1440 18 FG Local F 2366
Briege MacOscar 853 17 FF Local F 1375
Peter O’Brien 2353 17 LAB Local M 2557
Deirdre Geraghty-Smith 892 17 FF Local F 1480
Deirdre Heney 1116 17 FF Local F 1729
Jackie Cahill 1676 17 FF Dáil M 4634
Johnny Guirke 2140 17 SF Dáil M 1566
Mark Wall 3197 17 LAB Seanad M 3020
Oliver Moran 3264 17 GP Local M 2836
Seán Crowe 1834 17 SF Dáil M 5879
Seán Kyne 1454 17 FG Seanad M 6508
Verona Murphy 1632 17 IND Dáil F 1080
Aengus Ó Snodaigh 2590 16 SF Dáil M 8788
Martin Browne 1026 16 SF Dáil M 1018
Joe Neville 1296 16 FG Local M 1568
Mary Fitzpatrick 2077 16 FF Seanad F 2380
Jim Gildea 981 15 FG Local M 816
Chris MacManus 3782 15 SF European Parliment M 2170
Niall Murphy 1010 15 GP Local M 385
Colm Markey 1803 14 FG European Parliment M 1648
Daniel Whooley 1589 14 GP Local M 1945
Laura Donaghy 1785 14 GP Local F 1150
Anna Grainger 1661 14 FG Local F 1124
Joe Kavanagh 2690 14 FG Local M 1839
Matt Shanahan 2701 14 IND Dáil M 976
Adrienne Wallace 743 13 SPBP Local F 2240
Eoghan O’Brien 1728 13 FF Local M 1355
David Healy 1974 13 GP Local M 2308
Remu Adejinmi 1737 13 FF Local F 1752
Steven Matthews 2274 13 GP Dáil M 2183
Dean Mulligan 1243 12 I4C Local M 958
Deirdre Cullen 431 12 FF Local F 180
Joan Collins 2171 12 I4C Dáil F 10927
Michael Collins 2600 12 IND Dáil M 1192
Deirdre O’Donovan 647 12 FF Local F 1851
Olivia O’Sullivan 1873 12 FG Local F 4887
Brendan Smith 1051 11 FF Dáil M 3788
Marcia D’Alton 735 11 IND Local F 1305
Ned O’Sullivan 1230 11 FF Seanad M 1368
Cieran Perry 1135 11 IND Local M 721
Terry Shannon 855 11 FF Local M 877
Kieran McCarthy 1895 10 IND Local M 3143
Daniel Ceitinn 229 10 SF Local M 212
Ed O’Brien 877 10 FF Local M 1619
Claire O’Connor 1596 10 FF Local F 1482
Mick Finn 1854 10 IND Local M 2809
Paddy Holohan 571 10 SF Local M 47301
Tony Fitzgerald 1417 10 FF Local M 3568
Alan Hayes 807 9 IND Local M 1843
Bill Clear 943 9 SD Local M 1066
Mick Nugent 727 9 SF Local M 1723
Darragh Moriarty 2054 9 LAB Local M 1374
Jane Horgan-Jones 1290 9 LAB Local F 4319
Joe Costello 907 9 LAB Local M 6679
John Kennedy 703 9 FG Local M 1047
Larry O’Toole 481 9 SF Local M 686
Martina O’Connor 610 9 GP Local M 485
Nial Ring 570 9 IND Local M 1118
Peter Hamilton 662 9 GP Local M 607
Tim Lombard 1412 9 FG Seanad M 3285
Aisling Dolan 1102 8 FG Seanad F 1167
Bernard Durkan 1180 8 FG Dáil M 6313
Barry Saul 1369 8 FG Local M 1252
Paddy McCartan 706 8 FG Local M 619
Danny Byrne 640 8 FG Local M 505
Declan Meenagh 1433 8 LAB Local M 2562
Deirdre Clune 2340 8 FG European Parliment F 7119
Leonard Kelly 536 8 IND Local M 1018
Maeve O’Connell 1118 8 FG Local F 818
Michael Fitzmaurice 800 8 IND Dáil M 3068
Vincent P. Martin 1296 8 GP Seanad M 2001
Alan O’Connor 803 7 GP Local M 1062
Alastair McKinstry 786 7 GP Local M 1225
Aengus O’Rourke 366 7 FF Local M 1299
Colm O’Rourke 1484 7 FG Local M 8832
Deirdre Ford 1007 7 FG Local F 2552
Darcy Lonergan 1401 7 GP Local F 1329
Erin McGreehan 2468 7 FF Seanad F 1522
Nuala Killeen 1430 7 SD Local F 2551
Garret Ahearn 1191 7 FG Seanad M 1945
Lettie McCarthy 1513 7 LAB Local F 1555
Erika Doyle 351 7 GP Local F 737
Michael Moynihan 1033 7 FF Dáil M 2748
Eddie Mulligan 2381 7 FF Local M 4262
Paul Gogarty 340 7 IND Local M 861
Seán Hartigan 1394 7 GP Local M 1096
Shane Cassells 906 7 FF Seanad M 3344
Vicki Casserly 674 7 FG Local F 2513
Carly Bailey 1223 6 SD Local M 4009
Mick Duff 982 6 IND Local M 1698
Damian Boylan 584 6 FG Local M 872
David Stanton 1264 6 FG Dáil M 6794
John Paul Feeley 606 6 FF Local M 1454
Marie Casserly 2629 6 IND Local F 5790
Séamus Ryan 790 6 LAB Local M 2383
Seán Canney 1037 6 IND Dáil M 3668
Pat Casey 440 6 FF Seanad M 1422
Micheál Carrigy 822 5 FG Seanad M 525
Shane O’Callaghan 866 5 FG Local M 1508
Carol Nolan 820 5 IND Dáil F 1583
David Gilroy 1067 5 IND Local M 960
Janice Boylan 780 5 SF Local F 528
Jennifer Murnane O’Connor 1010 5 FF Dáil F 1477
Joe Leddin 1011 5 LAB Local M 1491
Johnny Mythen 665 5 SF Dáil M 1366
Juliet O’Connell 1092 5 LAB Local F 1662
Marian Harkin 1705 5 IND Dáil F 9043
Sarah O’Reilly 337 5 AON Local F 869
Sharon Tolan 679 5 FG Local F 2199
Sophie Nicoullaud 859 5 IND Local F 1389
Susan Gallagher 885 5 GP Local F 713
Anthony Lavin 703 4 FG Local M 1500
Aoibhinn Tormey 546 4 FG Local F 814
Racheal Batten 411 4 FF Local F 993
Brian O’Donoghue 447 4 FG Local M 1521
Ian Carey 578 4 GP Local M 1006
Ian Carey 578 4 GP Local M 35
Christy Burke 378 4 IND Local M 1221
Colette Finn 1371 4 GP Local F 1157
Dathí Doolan 1123 4 SF Local M 4890
Damien O’Reilly 234 4 FF Local M 1970
Darragh Butler 379 4 FF Local M 1664
Emma Blain 589 4 FG Local F 2013
Imelda Munster 1236 4 SF Dáil F 3228
Irene Winters 870 4 FG Local F 1801
John Paul O’Shea 673 4 FG Local M 4462
Kenneth Noel O’Flynn 156 4 FF Local M 2677
Mark Leigh 355 4 LAB Local M 370
Seána Ó Rodaigh 1731 4 LAB Local M 1368
Tara Deacy 796 4 SD Local F 2068
Cathal Boland 96 3 IND Local M 280
Cathal Byrne 304 3 FG Local M 1093
Antóin Watters 591 3 SF Local M 1161
Emma Coffey 563 3 FF Local F 1054
John Francis Flynn 62 3 FF Local M 398
Francis Timmons 661 3 IND Local M 964
George Lawlor 1096 3 LAB Local M 3454
Daithí de Róiste 186 3 FF Local M 1540
Daniel Butler 1757 3 FG Local M 3228
Deirdre Ferris 320 3 SF Local F 684
Elena Secas 473 3 LAB Local F 914
Eva Elizabeth Dowling 478 3 GP Local F 2453
Eddie Fennessy 53 3 SF Local M 1375
Jimmy Guerin 217 3 IND Local M 494
Joe Flaherty 298 3 FF Dáil M 3431
Mary Freehill 1059 3 LAB Local F 702
Mary Rose Desmond 695 3 FF Local F 1009
Michael Watters 366 3 FF Local M 420
Norma Moriarty 253 3 FF Local F 1173
Pat Buckley 470 3 SF Dáil M 1834
Paul Mulville 325 3 SD Local M 1056
Richard O’Donoghue 1051 3 IND Dáil M 1598
Séafra Ó Faoláin 1089 3 GP Local M 1601
Seamas McGrattan 471 3 SF Local M 712
Robbie Gallagher 375 3 FF Seanad M 1246
Siobhan Shovlin 385 3 FG Local F 1085
Sorca Clarke 1634 3 SF Dáil F 1129
Ted Tynan 232 3 WP Local M 440
Tom O’Leary 397 3 FG Local M 2003
Alan Lawes 449 2 IND Local M 1326
Anne Colgan 444 2 IND Local F 545
Victor Boyhan 305 2 IND Seanad M 772
Caroline Conroy 815 2 GP Local F 1440
Carrie Smyth 445 2 LAB Local F 2317
Seán Conlon 131 2 SF Local M 529
Dessie Ellis 128 2 SF Dáil M 499
Frankie Daly 429 2 IND Local M 1082
Gráinne Maguire 371 2 IND Local F 375
Joanna Byrne 365 2 SF Local F 1002
Sean Drew 178 2 FF Local M 371
Colm Kenny 328 2 GP Local M 183
Michael Creed 555 2 FG Dáil M 8424
Damian O’Farrell 293 2 IND Local M 1211
Gary Doherty 513 2 SF Local M 1055
Hazel Smyth 349 2 GP Local F 557
James Humphreys 442 2 LAB Local M 513
James Charity 172 2 IND Local M 631
Jimmy Moloney 443 2 FF Local M 1108
Justin Moylan 268 2 FF Local M 239
Kazi Ahmed 339 2 FG Local M 655
Colm Kelleher 1835 2 FF Local M 1069
Niamh Kennedy 146 2 IND Local M 998
Liam Sinclair 534 2 IND Local M 953
Michael D’Arcy 10 2 FG Seanad M 82
Michelle Hall 376 2 LAB Local F 1268
Naoise Ó Cearúil 320 2 FF Local F 1252
Noeleen Reilly 322 2 IND Local F 3454
Peter Ormond 40 2 FF Local M 919
Pádraig McEvoy 313 2 IND Local M 1543
Paschal McEvoy 55 2 FF Local M 478
Paul Bell 585 2 LAB Local M 2384
Pauline Tully 836 2 SF Dáil F 1043
Shay Brennan 547 2 FF Local M 1296
Tania Doyle 273 2 IND Local F 284
Declan Flanagan 199 1 FG Local M 167
Aindrias Moynihan 1371 1 FF Dáil M 1075
Aisling Dempsey 125 1 FF Local F 216
Albert Dolan 143 1 FF Local M 284
Andrea McKevitt 149 1 FF Local M 232
Aoife Flynn-Kennedy 38 1 FG Local F 293
Aoife McCooey 464 1 FF Local F 1252
Abul Kalam Azad Talukder 56 1 FF Local M 334
Marie Baker 603 1 FG Local F 1414
Brigid Manton 370 1 FF Local F 271
Brigid Teefy 54 1 IND Local F 69
Frank McNamara 176 1 FG Local M 159
Cathal Foley 59 1 SF Local M 658
Cathal Rasmussen 70 1 LAB Local M 194
Cat O’Driscoll 459 1 SD Local F 1318
Conor Keelan 20 1 FF Local M 110
Michael Gleeson 127 1 KIA Local M 328
John Sheahan 55 1 FG Local M NA
Tom Kitt 67 1 FF Local M 22
Críona Ní Dhálaigh 39 1 SF Local F 588
Noel Connolly 87 1 SF Local M 428
Paul McCabe 51 1 FF Local M 534
Séamus Cosaí Fitzgerald 33 1 FG Local M 45
Patricia Roe 295 1 SD Local F 558
Shane Curley 85 1 FF Local M 632
Dave Quinn 60 1 SD Local M 588
Eileen Lynch 164 1 FG Local F 1555
Bridie Collins 119 1 FF Local F 215
Fintan Brett 44 1 FG Local M 111
Fionnán Fitzgerald 54 1 FF Local M 998
Ger Carthy 133 1 IND Local M 163
Jack Murray 351 1 SF Local M 1309
John Daniel Maher 634 1 LAB Local M 1779
Kate Feeney 174 1 FF Local F 2522
Kenneth Collins 6 1 SF Local M 143
Kevin Donoghue 1173 1 LAB Local M 1945
Kieran Dennison 104 1 FG Local M 4148
Vanessa Liston 311 1 GP Local F 835
Marie Moloney 74 1 LAB Local F 1212
Máirín McGrath 173 1 IND Local F 2356
Mícheál Mac Donncha 281 1 SF Local M 712
Neil Feighery 16 1 FG Local M 197
Séamus Morris 285 1 IND Local M 1932
Niall Blaney 282 1 FF Seanad M 473
Niall Kelleher 56 1 FF Local M 1238
Peter Keane 51 1 FF Local M 99
Punam Rane 380 1 FG Local F 740
Patrick Connor-Scarteen 103 1 FG Local M 705
Seán Martin 172 1 FF Local M 478
Joe O’Reilly 397 1 FG Seanad M 2851
Shane Moynihan 753 1 FF Local M 1812
Catherine Slattery 40 1 FF Local F 163
Veralouise Behan 104 1 FF Local F 179
Adam Wyse 85 0 FF Local M 1100
Adrian Henchy 90 0 FF Local M 778
Aidan Farrelly 625 0 SD Local M 985
Aidan Browne 12 0 FF Local M 421
Alan Cheevers 263 0 FF Local M 371
Alan Coleman 17 0 IND Local M 1637
Andrea Dalton 39 0 FF Local M 230
Andy Gladney 2 0 SF Local M 63
Anne Ferris 24 0 LAB Local F NA
Ann Norton 3 0 IND Local F 431
Anthony Molloy 81 0 FF Local M 326
Audrey Buckley 54 0 FF Local F 102
Avril Cronin 63 0 FG Local F 659
Baby Pereppadan 35 0 FG Local M 136
Paul Murphy 2 0 FG Local M 293
Brendan Barry 7 0 SF Local M 142
Ben Dalton O’Sullivan 83 0 IND Local M NA
Bernard Moynihan 8 0 FF Local M 237
Brendan Wyse 30 0 FG Local M 278
Mike Bray 24 0 FF Local M 553
Breandán Fitzgerald 41 0 FF Local M 2082
Brian Dooley 15 0 FF Local M 197
Brian Lawlor 175 0 FG Local M 461
Brídín Murphy 17 0 FG Local F 136
Paul O’Brien 29 0 LAB Local M 595
Dearbháil Butler 296 0 GP Local F 214
Niamh Souihan 9 0 FG Local F 126
Carmel Kelly 19 0 FF Local F 86
Shane P. O’Reilly 46 0 IND Local M 890
Peter Cleere 251 0 FF Local M 1403
Charlie O’Connor 27 0 FF Local M 45
Ciaran Brogan 16 0 FF Local M 175
Clare Claffey 123 0 SD Local F 620
Gerry O’Connor 20 0 FG Local M 536
Mary McCamley 15 0 LAB Local F 269
Paddy McQuillan 6 0 IND Local M 87
Richie Molloy 16 0 IND Local M 300
Danielle Twomey 101 0 SF Local M 490
Anthony Connaghan 27 0 SF Local M 2517
Andrew McGuinness 3 0 FF Local M 131
Anthony Connick 11 0 IND Local M 24
Anthony Waldron 16 0 IND Local M 245
Gabe Cronnelly 36 0 IND Local M 185
Declan Power 76 0 IND Local M 281
Derry Canty 144 0 FG Local M 137
Derek Mitchell 37 0 FG Local M 409
Dolores Minogue 28 0 FG Local F 225
Dónal Grady 5 0 IND Local M NA
Evelyn Francis Parsons 82 0 IND Local F 98
Tracey O’Dwyer 34 0 FG Local F NA
Eddie Fitzpatrick 6 0 FF Local M 167
Elaine McGinty 168 0 LAB Local F 124
Eoin Ó Broin 634 0 IND Local M 1647
Frank McDermott 3 0 FG Local M 20
Frank Fahy 74 0 FG Local M 348
Frank O’Flynn 62 0 FF Local M 956
Gerard Murphy 2 0 FG Local M 208
Martin Harley 68 0 FG Local M 49
James Byrne 104 0 FF Local M 662
James Kennedy 1 0 LAB Local M 232
John Connolly 138 0 FF Local M 807
Jim Ryan 7 0 IND Local M 60
Joe Conway 10 0 IND Local M 183
John Lyons 161 0 IND Local M 4084
John Mullen 7 0 FF Local M 108
Katie Murphy 3 0 FG Local F 434
Ken Glynn 88 0 FF Local M 868
Geraldine Keogan 2 0 IND Local F 19
Liam Brazil 4 0 FG Local M NA
Ian Lynch 22 0 IND Local M 601
Maria Murphy 67 0 FG Local F 508
Marianne Butler 120 0 GP Local F 862
Marie Murphy 25 0 FG Local F 273
Martin Brett 1 0 IND Local M 94
Mary Hoade 137 0 FF Local F 324
Lisa McDonald 25 0 FF Local F 93
Patrick McGowan 61 0 FF Local M 90
Michael Collins 139 0 FF Local M 1233
Dan McSweeney 74 0 FG Local M NA
Michael Murphy 164 0 FG Local M 917
Pat Kennedy 1 0 FF Local M 63
Paul Hayes 2 0 IND Local M 902
Seán Kelly 2 0 FF Local M 531
Sean Smith 6 0 FF Local M 186
Shelly Herterich-Quinn 53 0 FF Local F 632
Tom Fortune 34 0 IND Local M 302
Tom Forde 43 0 SF Local M 209
Tom Murphy 9 0 FF Local M 757
Cathy Bennett 6 0 SF Local F 147
Peter McVitty 1 0 FG Local M NA
Jim Codd 8 0 AON Local M 121
Clare Colleran Molloy 1 0 FF Local F 144
Colm Carthy 357 0 SF Local M 569
Colm Murray 96 0 FG Local M 143
Ivan Connaughton 41 0 IND Local M 276
Conor Bergin 225 0 FG Local M 888
John Costelloe 16 0 SF Local M 332
Brendan Fay 1 0 IND Local M 3
John O’Sullivan 4 0 FG Local M 465
Nicholas Crossan 12 0 IND Local M 17
Dáithí Ó Cualáin 20 0 FF Local M 74
Dermot “Daisy” O’Brien 22 0 SF Local M 1061
Daryl Barron 221 0 FF Local M 1127
David Fitzgerald 50 0 FG Local M 1237
David Maxwell 19 0 FG Local M 151
Dónal Coyle 13 0 FF Local M 62
Deirdre Donnelly 222 0 IND Local F 849
Declan Bree 49 0 I4C Local M 1035
Declan Clune 26 0 IND Local M 693
Declan Burgess 176 0 FG Local M 1315
Declan Hurley 63 0 IND Local M 1751
Deirdre Kelly 51 0 FF Local F 1440
Deirdre Kingston 84 0 LAB Local F 2021
Deirdre O’Brien 2 0 FF Local F 68
Dermot Richardson 38 0 SF Local M 47
Diarmuid Wilson 196 0 FF Seanad M 389
Andrew Duncan 11 0 FG Local M 523
Maria Dollard 551 0 GP Local F 337
Donagh Mark Killilea 31 0 FF Local M 214
Dónal Gilroy 84 0 FF Local M 128
Dónal Smith 81 0 FF Local M 250
Donna McGettigan 5 0 SF Local F 168
John Sheehan 23 0 FF Local M 391
Mags Crean 20 0 IND Local F 1259
Susan Crawford 36 0 GP Local F 1179
Éamon Dooley 6 0 FF Local M 206
Edel Corrigan 71 0 SF Local F 958
Alan Edge 206 0 IND Local M 461
Edward Timmins 15 0 FG Local M 53
Eileen Mannion 24 0 FG Local F 584
Éamon Quinlan 25 0 FF Local M 380
Barbara-Anne Murphy 12 0 FF Local F 298
Evie Sammon 123 0 FG Local F 1199
Felim Gurn 64 0 IND Local M 93
Fergal Dennehy 218 0 FF Local M 979
Fintan Phelan 496 0 FF Local M 1728
Peter Flynn 6 0 FG Local M 69
Tom Fox 16 0 FG Local M 72
Frankie Keena 62 0 FF Local M 291
Gail Dunne 15 0 FF Local F 180
Garret Kelleher 381 0 FG Local M 1260
Ger Deere 50 0 FG Local M 49
Ger Keohane 35 0 IND Local M 43
Gerry McMonagle 62 0 SF Local M 254
Gerry Murray 6 0 SF Local M 102
Gerry Warnock 101 0 IND Local M 387
Gillian Coughlan 49 0 FF Local M 269
Gino O’Boyle 65 0 SPBP Local M 270
Dara Mulvey 134 0 FG Local M 730
Grace McManus 48 0 SF Local F 695
Guss O’Connell 41 0 IND Local M 156
Henry Cremin 30 0 SF Local M 114
Ian Doyle 1 0 FF Local M 48
Imelda Byrne 223 0 FF Local F 298
Joe Behan 68 0 IND Local M 164
Ita Reynolds-Flynn 6 0 FG Local F 50
Ivan Canning 22 0 FF Local M 150
James Collins 76 0 FF Local M 3174
Jerry O’Dea 238 0 FF Local M 855
Joe Fox 471 0 FG Local M 1257
Jimmy Kavanagh 160 0 FG Local M 1201
Johnny Flynn 5 0 FG Local M 398
Jody Power 12 0 GP Local F NA
Joe Byrne 15 0 FG Local M 261
Joe Garrihy 7 0 FG Local M 82
Joe Lyons 2 0 FG Local M 74
Joe Malone 1 0 FF Local M 564
Joe Newman 33 0 IND Local M 13
Joe Sheridan 1 0 FF Local M 129
John Clendennen 152 0 FG Local M 848
John Leahy 26 0 IND Local M 1322
Johnnie Wall 6 0 FF Local M 158
John Reilly 20 0 FG Local M 187
John Shaw 7 0 FF Local M 727
John Sheamuis Ó Fearraigh 2 0 SF Local M 74
John Sheridan 84 0 FF Local M 841
John Walsh 55 0 LAB Local M 757
Karen Coakley 173 0 FG Local F 866
Kevin Duffy 15 0 FG Local M 101
Kiernan Mahon 3 0 SPBP Local M 306
Emma Murphy 175 0 FF Local F 1457
Liam Madden 23 0 FG Local M 259
Liam O’Connor 33 0 FG Local M 461
Liam Reilly 6 0 FF Local M 35
Liona O’Toole 12 0 IND Local F 566
Louise Heavin 263 0 GP Local M 895
Lourda Scott 691 0 GP Local F 866
Alan Tobin 18 0 FG Local M 425
Lynsey McGovern 21 0 IND Local F 962
Mary Linehan Foley 173 0 IND Local F 266
Michael D. O’Shea 1 0 FF Local M 96
Madeleine Johansson 128 0 SPBP Local F 1223
Maeve Yore 52 0 IND Local F NA
Mark Duffy 158 0 IND Local M 1504
Mark Hackett 65 0 GP Local M 93
Mark Nestor 6 0 FF Local M 93
Martin McDermott 847 0 FF Local M 642
Mary Callaghan 297 0 SD Local F 645
Mary Fayne 84 0 FG Local F 682
Mary Hanafin 71 0 FF Local F 261
Mary Howard 428 0 FG Local F 1316
Maura Healy-Rae 1 0 IND Local F NA
Frank McBrearty Jnr 23 0 FG Local M 143
Lynn McCrave 72 0 FG Local F 114
Séamus McGrath 163 0 FF Local M 477
Conor D. McGuinness 40 0 SF Local M 356
Ronan McMahon 165 0 IND Local M 1191
Mike Cubbard 137 0 IND Local M 2059
Melanie Corrigan 53 0 FG Local F 325
Melisa Halpin 105 0 SPBP Local F 449
Michael McBride 5 0 IND Local M 133
Michael Murphy 5 0 FG Local M 202
Mick Cahill 99 0 FF Local M 78
Michael Crowe 56 0 FF Local M 814
Mikey Sheehy 118 0 FF Local M 1136
Aisling Moran 39 0 FG Local F 248
Paddy Meade 86 0 FG Local M 1450
Natalie Tracey 73 0 SF Local F 1699
Neil Cruise 13 0 FG Local M 217
Níall McNelis 136 0 LAB Local M 2583
Nick Killian 12 0 IND Local M 170
Noel Cribbin 33 0 FG Local M 216
Noel French 1 0 FG Local M 22
Noel Thomas 30 0 FF Local M 62
Noel McCarthy 1 0 FG Local M 266
John O’Donnell 12 0 IND Local M 327
Orla Leyden 24 0 FF Local F 537
Marie O’Sullivan 61 0 FG Local F 296
Paddy O’Rourke 11 0 FF Local M 483
Pádraig Fallon 31 0 SF Local M 191
Pamela Kearns 157 0 LAB Local F 714
Pat Dunne 44 0 I4C Local M 226
Patrick O’Neill 25 0 FG Local M 769
Paul Ross 231 0 FG Local M 489
Pearse McGeough 6 0 SF Local M 37
Peggy O’Dwyer 12 0 FG Local F 41
Peir Leonard 6 0 IND Local M NA
Pete Roche 7 0 FG Local M 130
Peter Ryan 9 0 FG Local M 523
Richard John Truell 4 0 FG Local M 57
Robert Power 162 0 FF Local M 2727
Robert O’Donoghue 45 0 LAB Local M 352
Roger Kennedy 1 0 FF Local M 62
Ronan Moore 201 0 SD Local M 697
Ross O’Connell 12 0 SD Local M 217
Sarah Kiely 132 0 FG Local F 1408
Sarah Reilly 209 0 FG Local F 471
Suzanne Doyle 11 0 FF Local F 115
Séamus Butler 86 0 FF Local M 356
Seamus Coyle 5 0 FF Local M 26
Séamus Hanafin 8 0 FF Local M 367
Aidan Davitt 65 0 FF Seanad M 1118
Denis O’Donovan 1 0 FF Seanad M 207
Paul Daly 202 0 FF Seanad M 1272
Paddy Burke 39 0 FG Seanad M 297
Shay Cullen 9 0 FG Local M 149
Tony O’Shea 42 0 FG Local M 243
Sharon Benson 124 0 SF Local F 227
Sinéad Maguire 152 0 FG Local F 619
Siobhán Ambrose 15 0 FF Local F 379
Seán Ó Fearghaí­l 194 0 CC Dáil M 1868
Stephen Keary 14 0 FG Local M 324
Stephen McKee 77 0 FF Local M 357
Susan McCarthy 25 0 FG Local F 830
Suzanne McEneaney 36 0 GP Local F 328
Tom Behan 27 0 FF Local M 198
Teresa Costello 155 0 FF Local F 712
Terence Flanagan 2 0 FG Local M 582
Maura Bell 3 0 LAB Local F 169
David Dunne 191 0 SF Local M 1257
Thomasina Connell 176 0 FG Local F 1176
Thomas Phelan 167 0 LAB Local M 600
Tony Murphy 117 0 IND Local M 523
Tomás Sharkey 1 0 SF Local M 305
Tom Cunningham 1 0 SF Local M 71
Tom Kivlehan 99 0 GP Local M 530
Tom MacSharry 32 0 FF Local M 500
Michael Whelan 2 0 FF Local M 225
Pat Treanor 20 0 SF Local M 278
Trevor Gilligan 171 0 FF Local M 1087
Trevor Golden 13 0 IND Local M NA
Cillian Murphy 436 0 FF Local M 2857
Howard Mahony 105 0 FF Local M 165
Tim Broderick 3 0 IND Local M 163
Anne Feeney 15 0 FG Local F NA
Angela Feeney 388 0 LAB Local F 519
John Egan 6 0 FG Local M 44
John Pratt 17 0 LAB Local M 371
Liam Callaghan 1 0 FG Local M 47
Brendan Mulroy 8 0 FF Local M 751
Thomas Walsh 58 0 FG Local M 750
Séamus Weir 3 0 IND Local M NA
Thomas Welby 7 0 IND Local M 171
Patsy Glennon 1 0 FF Local F 20
Yvonne Collins 197 0 FF Local F 147

The average percentage of abusive tweets that politicians received over the 12 month period was 0.76%, with the percentage of abusive tweets that male and female politicians receive being 0.78% and 0.72% respectively. Comparing the amount of abuse that male and female politicians receive from all levels of government, there is no significant difference between the number of abusive tweets that male or female politicians receive (figure 23). The mean number of abusive tweets that male and female politicians received during the 12 month period of data collection was 102.28 and 76.32 respectively.

Number of abusive tweets received by each male and female politician at any level of government

Figure 23: Number of abusive tweets received by each male and female politician at any level of government

However if we investigate the amount of abuse that male and female politicians received at each level of government; women receive a significantly greater number of abusive tweets over their male counterparts in both the Seanad and Local governments (figure 24). In the Seanad the mean number of abusive tweets received by female Senators was more than twice that of their male counterparts and in Local government women received on average approximately three times as many abusive tweets than men (table 13). In the Dáil, there was no significant difference in the number of abusive tweets that each gender received.

Number of abusive tweets received by each male and female politician at each level of government

Figure 24: Number of abusive tweets received by each male and female politician at each level of government

Table 13: comparison of the mean number of toxic tweets directed at male and female politicians from different levels of representation
Group F M P
Local 26.7 8.5 0.0106*
Dáil 291.6 400.4 0.4124
Seanad 102.0 37.9 0.0011**

Across the major political parties; while there was no significant difference between the level of abuse that women received across political parties, men from government parties (Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party) were significantly more likely to receive abusive tweets that men from other parties (figure 25 and table 14)

Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians across major political parties

Figure 25: Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians across major political parties

Table 14: comparison of the mean number of toxic tweets directed at male and female politicians from different political parties
gender P FF FG GP IND LAB SD SF SPBP
M 0.000011**** 103.4 165.3 104.7 32.7 45.3 44.6 65.0 287.0
F 0.22 46.4 76.3 94.9 38.8 28.3 91.1 205.5 46.2

While there was no significant difference between the level of abuse that men or women received depending on whether they were a member of a government party (Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party)(figure 26), there was a significant difference in the number of abusive tweets that cabinet members received (both men and women) compared the non-cabinet TDs (figure 27).

Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians depending on whehter they were a member of a government party

Figure 26: Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians depending on whehter they were a member of a government party

Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians depending on whehter they were a cabinet member

Figure 27: Number of abusive tweets received by male and female politicians depending on whehter they were a cabinet member

It is apparent that the number of abusive tweets a politician received increases with the number of followers that they have (figure 28). The amount of variance in the number of abusive tweets a politician receives explained by follower count is very higher, with the R^2 for both male and female politicians being >0.8. There is also no difference between the number of abusive tweets that male and female politicians receive per follower when no other features are considered.

relationship between the number of followers a politician has with the number of abusive tweets they received, grouped by gender

Figure 28: relationship between the number of followers a politician has with the number of abusive tweets they received, grouped by gender

When the relationship between follower count and the number of abusive tweets received is subset by the level of government, the number of abusive tweets per follower that women in the Seanad and Local Government receive is significantly in excess to that of their male counterparts (figure 29). However, the number of abusive tweets that male and female TDs received per follower is almost identical.

relationship between the number of followers a politician has with the number of abusive tweets they received, grouped by gender and level of government

Figure 29: relationship between the number of followers a politician has with the number of abusive tweets they received, grouped by gender and level of government

To quantify the effect that each feature in the data set had on the number of abusive tweets received by politicians, linear regression was applied. A series of fixed effect models, (which assumed that each feature was independent) and a series of interaction coefficients (which took into account interactions between features, as demonstrated above) were used. Table 15 shows the coefficients for fixed effect models for explaining the number of abusive tweets a politician received. In all models, followers count was the most significant predictor. When party was included Fine Gael, Independents and Sinn Féin politicians received significantly less abusive tweets than Fianna Fáil politicians (the base group in model 4). Models 2, 3 and 4 explained >0.75 of the variance.

Table 15: Coeffecient table of fixed effects models
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
(Intercept) 76.229* -26.804 -33.980 17.081
genderM 22.576 0.382 -1.156 -4.917
followers_count 0.023*** 0.023*** 0.023***
GroupLocal 18.124 15.079
GroupSeanad -69.219 -78.354+
PartyFG -58.340*
PartyGP -23.071
PartyIND -70.373*
PartyLAB -75.718+
PartySD -102.326+
PartySF -77.964*
PartySPBP -51.087
Num.Obs. 745 729 729 729
R2 0.000 0.759 0.761 0.764
R2 Adj. -0.001 0.759 0.760 0.761

When considering the interaction between features, if just the interaction between gender and follower count was included in the model, there was no significant difference in the coefficients. However, when the interaction between gender, follower count and level of government was considered; female Local Councillors received ~8 times as many abusive tweets per follower as male Local Councillors and female Senators ~3 times as many abusive tweets per follower than male Senators (table 16).

Table 16: Coeffecient table of interaction coeffecients
Interaction Model 1 Interaction Model 2 Interaction Model 3
(Intercept) 37.889 -26.447* -13.914
genderF × GroupDáil 261.740*
genderM × GroupDáil 364.430***
genderF × GroupLocal -10.989
genderM × GroupLocal -29.288
genderF × GroupSeanad 64.111
genderF × followers_count 0.023***
genderM × followers_count 0.023***
genderF × followers_count × GroupDáil 0.022***
genderM × followers_count × GroupDáil 0.023***
genderF × followers_count × GroupLocal 0.039***
genderM × followers_count × GroupLocal 0.005
genderF × followers_count × GroupSeanad 0.011*
genderM × followers_count × GroupSeanad 0.004
Num.Obs. 745 729 729
R2 0.070 0.759 0.777
R2 Adj. 0.063 0.759 0.775

Conclusions

From this analysis the abuse that Irish politicians receive on Twitter appears to increase in response to significant political events or controversies. A series of controversies wracked the coalition government of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens throughout their first few months of office in 2020. While the most notable of these events (Golfgate) was unfortunately not covered in the analysis, a number of high salience events occurred at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 which were covered during data collection. The controversy around the mother and baby homes legislation resulted in a spike of abusive tweets directed at Irish politicians, predominantly towards members of the Dáil and to a lesser extent members of the Seanad. It must be noted that there was no rise in abusive tweets during the Dublin Bay South By election in July 2021. In fact following the exit of the COVID-19 restrictions in early 2021, the number of abusive tweets directed at Irish politicians decreased. Whether this was due to people leaving the platform or some action by Twitter to reduce abuse is unknown.

An increase in incivility was also apparent in response to tweets by members of the Dáil mentioning ‘hard’ topics, such as topics related to issues of high salience. When analyzing responses to tweets by Local Councillors or Senators, there was no significant difference in the number of toxic responses to tweets of one type of topic over the next. Despite Local Councillors holding a lower level of government the tweets by politicians that received the greatest number of toxic responses were by Local Councillors (Clodagh Higgins, Deirdre Conroy and Hazel Chu). One tweet by Councillor Clodagh Higgins received ~10 times as many toxic responses as the tweet by TDs which received the most toxic responses (545 vs 54).

Of the most prolific abusive accounts, three communities were determined. These three communities could be characterized by their political affiliations and were most affiliated with Sinn Féin, Fine Gael and Independents respectively. Each community had a handful of key accounts which bridged the majority of the other accounts, however the ‘Sinn Féin’ community had a large proportion of smaller accounts following the key accounts. While there was a distinct character of each community based on their party affiliation, who they directed their abuse towards was similar, with each community directing the majority of their abuse towards Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politicians.

There was an attempt in this analysis to determine the existence (or lack there of) of so called ‘Shinner bots.’ While there is still no definitive answer to that question the following can be said to shine more light on this topic. Firstly there was a very small number of probable bots detected by machine learning, secondly there was a not insignificant number of accounts removed from Twitter during the 12 months that this analysis covered. Whether these accounts were removed because they were determined to be bots or were removed for reported abuse is unknown.

Regression analysis revealed that while there was no significant difference between the number of abusive tweets female TDs received compared to their male counterparts, this was not the case for female members of the Seanad or Local Councils. When accounting for the number of followers a politician has, female Local Councillors received ~8 times as many abusive tweets per followers compared to their male counterparts, while female Senators received ~3 times as many abusive tweets per followers than their male counterparts. This disparity in the relative amount of abuse women receive compared to men within Local government and the Seanad is of particular concern as these two offices of government are the most common paths of to entering the Dáil and may be one cause of many disincentives in encouraging women to run for election. This disparity may also lead to women who are already in those offices of government to not use the platform and as such may not be increasing their communication or recognition with voters, thus hampering their chances of being elected to the Dáil.

While this analysis has highlighted when, to what and who may engage in abusive behaviour towards Irish politicians on Twitter, the trend which is of most concern to achieving a truly representative democracy is the level of abuse women in the traditional paths to becoming legislators (local councils and the Seanad) receive compared to men. Considering the number of newspaper articles published regarding abuse towards politicians on social media, it is not a stretch to suggest that this may be a barrier to women entering politics. The introduction of the gender quota has had a positive effect on the number of women in politics and goes much of the way in increasing gender parity in Irish politics. However the gender quota is only one tool in encouraging more women to enter politics and tackling additional barriers such as social media abuse should be given considerable attention by legislators.

Final notes

This analysis is not peer reviewed and a number of caveats are to be considering when reviewing this document. The use of the Perspective API in determining toxic tweets is not an ideal use of the Perspective models. Ideally perspective would be used to filter tweets that would then be coded by human’s and those coded tweets would be used to train a new algorithm for identifying toxic tweets, which would be more suited to an Irish context. However, given the limited resource of this analysis (i.e. the author received no funding and was performed in his spare time), this analysis provides a good pilot towards a more comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of political incivility towards Irish politicians on Twitter.

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