Conservative MP Chris Clarkson received more offensive tweets than Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd

Conservative MP Chris Clarkson received more offensive tweets than Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd, despite the Labour party receiving more abuse proportionally in the North West, a new BBC investigation has found.

The BBC’s Shared Data Unit analysed three million tweets aimed at MPs over a six-week period and found more than 130,000, around one in 20, could be classed as toxic.

The analysis used Perspective, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to spot toxic comments online.

It defines a toxic comment as one which is "rude, disrespectful or unreasonable" and "likely to make someone leave a conversation" which includes a broad range of results, which can range from defining someone as an "idiot" to things like misogyny and racism.

The team analysed all tweets mentioning MPs from March to Mid-April and found toxicity shown towards Labour and Conservative members differed depending on the region the politicians served.

Conservative MPs received a higher proportion of toxic-rated tweets than Labour in all regions apart from the North West, where MPs who received the most offensive tweets tended to be female and Labour. 

Whilst the two constituencies in the Rochdale borough are represented by both parties, it was Conservative MP Chris Clarkson, who received more toxic-rated tweets.

Over the period analysed by the BBC Shared Data Unit, the Heywood and Middleton MP received 147 tweets which could be classed as toxic, 3.3% of the public messages tagging him. Sixteen of these were classed as “severely toxic.”

Conversely, Labour MP Sir Tony Lloyd – who represents Rochdale – received just one toxic tweet out of 181 directed to him, which was not classed as severe: @tony4rochdale Your time was up years ago but your still hanging around [sic]

However, it should be pointed out Mr Clarkson received significantly more tweets than Mr Lloyd.

Another note is textual analysis tools cannot truly determine whether the negative comment was aimed directly at the MP in question, or if they were just mentioned, as several messages to Mr Clarkson show:

• @ChrisClarksonMP Setting the standard‚ He's a lying piece of s**t and I look forward to watching his and every Tory crash
• @ChrisClarksonMP Setting the standard for world leaders? He can't even comb his f****** hair!

The redacted profanity were the most commonly used swear words, with stupid, pathetic and idiot being the most common derogatory adjectives not classed as profanity.

Of the accounts to send the greatest volume of toxic-rated tweets, none could be considered bots under the recommended threshold set by botometer, a free online resource that detects the probability of an account being fake.

It is unknown if any of these accounts messaged Mr Clarkson or Mr Lloyd.

The BBC had contacted Twitter for a response, but the firm was unable to reply.

Twitter has previously said it is committed to combatting abuse as outlined in its Hateful Conduct Policy.

Mr Clarkson said: “Sadly, I’m not surprised that Conservative MPs receive the most abuse, or indeed that I receive significantly more than my Labour neighbour.

“Whilst Sir Tony and I are able to work together constructively, the Labour Party nationally encourages abuse of Conservative representatives through its casual use of emotive terms like ‘scum’ to describe those who don’t share their particular world view, along with the use of highly misleading and inflammatory social media content, often linked to opposition day debates.

“I am aware of a number of local Labour members actively involved in social media trolling, at least one of whom was elected to the Council representing Labour at the last local elections.

“Personally, I choose to ignore them as I have better things to spend my time on.”

Mr Lloyd has also been contacted for comment.