Women of color running for Congress are attacked disproportionately on X, report finds

Women of color running for Congress in 2024 have faced a disproportionate number of attacks on X compared with other candidates, according to a new report from the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the University of Pittsburgh.

The report sought to “compare the levels of offensive speech and hate speech that different groups of Congressional candidates are targeted with based on race and gender, with a particular emphasis on women of color.” To do this, the report’s authors analyzed 800,000 tweets that covered a three-month period between May 20 and August 23 of this year. That dataset represented all posts mentioning a candidate running for Congress with an account on X.

The report’s authors found that more than 20 percent of posts directed at Black and Asian women candidates “contained offensive language about the candidate.” It also found that Black women in particular were targeted with hate speech more often compared with other candidates.

“On average, less than 1% of all tweets that mentioned a candidate contained hate speech,” the report says. “However, we found that African-American women candidates were more likely than any other candidate to be subject to this type of post (4%).” That roughly lines up with X’s recent transparency report — the since Elon Musk took over the company — which said that rule-breaking content accounts for less than 1 percent of all posts on its platform.

Notably, the CDT’s report analyzed both hate speech — which ostensibly violates X’s policies — and “offensive speech,” which the report defined as “words or phrases that demean, threaten, insult, or ridicule a candidate.” While the latter category may not be against X’s rules, the report notes that the volume of suck attacks could still deter women of color from running for office. It recommends that X and other platforms take “specific measures” to counteract such effects.

“This should include clear policies that prohibit attacks against someone based on race or gender, greater transparency into how their systems address these types of attacks, better reporting tools and means for accountability, regular risk assessments with an emphasis on race and gender, and privacy preserving mechanisms for independent researchers to conduct studies using their data. The consequences of the status-quo where women of color candidates are targeted with significant attacks online at much higher rates than other candidates creates an immense barrier to creating a truly inclusive democracy.”