'Great women like you': Twitter bot battles sexism with kindness
Online harassment of New Zealand鈥檚 female political candidates has increased ahead of the country鈥檚 Oct. 17 general election. But a new Twitter bot is countering sexism online by detecting abusive posts and tweeting words of encouragement in response.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hugs a student during a visit to Cashmere High School in Christchurch, New Zealand, March 20, 2019. A Plan International study showed 1 in 5 girls had cut down on social media use after experiencing online harassment.
Edgar Su/Reuters
Wellington, New Zealand
An abuse-fighting bot has sent out hundreds of positive messages on social media to counter the online harassment of women candidates in New Zealand鈥檚 general election.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, her main rival the opposition leader Judith Collins, and more than 260 female parliamentary candidates have become a target for online hatred and sexism ahead of the Oct. 17 national polls.
That prompted the launch in August of the Parity Bot, which was first used in Canada鈥檚 elections last year and tweets a positive message every time it detects an abusive tweet against a female candidate.
鈥淎 whole bunch of studies out there show women candidates get exponentially more toxic tweets than men, which is why we have created this for women,鈥� said Jacqueline Comer, creative technologist of the bot.
鈥淚t is not to say that men don鈥檛 suffer from this, but it is a bigger problem for women,鈥� she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
Since launching in New Zealand, the first nation to give women the right to vote in 1893, the bot has analyzed 95,000 tweets and detected more than 1,800 abusive tweets, most of them targeting Ms. Ardern and Ms. Collins.
After the bot, developed by the Canada-headquartered Areto Labs, detects such tweets it puts out pre-written positive messages such as 鈥済reat women like you running to make NZ a better place.鈥�
The abusive tweets jumped from about 20 a day to a high of 100 during election campaigns against women candidates, said Ms. Comer.
A study this week by Plan International, a girls鈥� rights group, showed one in five girls and young women had cut down or quit using social media after experiencing online harassment.
鈥淲e haven鈥檛 treated online spaces as spaces where we live and work,鈥� said Golriz Ghahraman, an Iranian-born lawmaker who came to New Zealand as a child refugee and has been called a 鈥渢errorist鈥� and 鈥渏ihadist鈥� online.
The Green Party lawmaker, who is seeking re-election in the upcoming polls, called for 鈥渟ome form of legal regulation鈥� on the online attacks against women.
鈥淔or women, the failure to regulate online spaces has led to very serious breach of our rights to equality and access to equal opportunity,鈥� said Ms. Ghahraman.
This story was reported by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.