The recently published findings of a study into abusive messages towards MSPs are not at all surprising. We know that in recent years there has been a rise in threatening behaviour towards politicians across the UK. Much of this aggression takes place on digital platforms, but we all remember those heinous and tragic cases where it spilled over into the real world too.
The murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess should have served as a wake up call. But there is no evidence of a trend towards a more moderate form of political discourse. One where politicians and the people they serve can vehemently disagree on policies, but do so without resorting to abuse and threats.
The of a pilot programme established by the Scottish Parliament led to hundreds of social media posts being passed to Police Scotland. Thirty-eight MSPs took part in the programme. On average, each of them received twelve abusive posts which had to be reported to the police in less than a year.
Of 8,000 comments that the study determined were abusive, 461 were judged to be above the criminal threshold. Most of the abuse centred around the race, sexual orientation or gender of the MSPs they were directed to. Lynsey Hamill, Holyrood’s director of operations and digital, said that the trial “revealed the scale of online abuse directed at MSPs, including the number of posts which meet a criminal threshold for reporting”.
“Our findings are sobering,” she added. There will be people who read those figures.