The Intersectionality of Twitter Responses to Black Canadian Politicians

Abstract

Research has shown that Black politicians in the Global North contend with higher instances of abusive language on social media platforms. The study investigates how public interactions engage with the intersectional positionalities of nine Black Canadian politicians. We collected all the replies to tweets posted by the politicians from 2006 to 2021. Results from the manual analysis showed that 56% of the tweets had a neutral tone, meaning that even if they contained abusive language, they did not directly address the politician. They were also not complimentary. There were more negative tweets than positive ones; 23% versus 21%. The themes of the tweets with negative tones centered on opposition to the politicians’ discussion of racial inequalities or racism, or their party affiliations, especially affiliation to the Liberal Party or relationship with Prime Minister Trudeau. The manual analysis showed women politicians received higher rates of abuses, while in the sentiment analysis stage that covered the entire data set, men were more trolled with 66.6% of words directed at them being negative, compared to 55.7% for the women.