Women of color running for Congress are reportedly disproportionately targeted on X

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

The report's goal was to “compare the level of abusive and hate speech targeting different groups of congressional candidates based on race and gender, with a particular focus on women of color.” To do this, the report's authors analyzed 800,000 tweets , which covered a three-month period between May 20 and August 23 this year. This dataset included all posts that mentioned a candidate running for Congress with an account on X.

The report's authors found that more than 20 percent of posts targeting Black and Asian candidates “contained offensive language about the candidate.” It also found that black women in particular were more likely to be victims of hate speech compared to other candidates.

“On average, less than 1% of all tweets mentioning a candidate contained hate speech,” the report said. “However, we found that African-American female candidates are more likely than all other candidates to be selected for this type of position (4%).” This is roughly in line with the latest transparency report

In particular, the CDT report analyzed both hate speech – which allegedly violates the guidelines of Even though the latter category may not violate the rules of It recommends that X and other platforms take “specific measures” to counter such effects.

“This includes clear policies prohibiting attacks against people based on race or gender, greater transparency about how their systems handle these types of attacks, better reporting tools and means of accountability, regular risk assessments with a focus on race and gender, and data protection.” Maintaining mechanisms for independent researchers to conduct studies using their data. The consequences of the status quo, in which darker-skinned female candidates are significantly more likely to be attacked online than other candidates, represent an immense obstacle to the creation of a truly inclusive democracy.”