Responding to online abuse

Abusive comments and sharing offensive material online has become a common and difficult problemfor political organisations. Examples include: people targeting abuse at the social media accounts of politicians, upsetting comments in online chat rooms, blogs and on social media, comments and activists using inappropriate language, sharing offensive memes, videos or pictures. People who perform this type of behaviour are commonly known as internet trolls. Candidates, councillors, MPs and MSPs are particularly vulnerable to online trolling, bullying and abuse due to their public facing role and because they frequently use social media to communicate with voters and members.

Online abuse can come from people that the victim has never met and that have nothing to do with the party. On the other hand, a situation might happen where people from your own party carry out online abuse against another member, candidate or elected representative, or share inappropriate or offensive material.

In both cases, it is important to:

• Have a clear social media and online behaviour policy which includes: examples of behaviour which won’t be tolerated, how people can report incidents, and your complaints and disciplinary procedures
• Have a public statement on your website about your commitment to equality and that abusive or offensive behaviour won’t be tolerated. Include this statement in materials given to new members
• Use your disciplinary procedures to reprimand or expel remove members or supporters who carry out inappropriate online behaviour, online bullying or harassment
• Make sure that party staff and/or committee members are following the social media accounts of candidates and elected representatives so they can report online abuse and support the victims of it
• Provide training for people to block abusive comments or social media accounts
• Ask groups within the party who experience online abuse including LGBTI, disabled, ethnic minority and women’s networks to input into strategies for tackling the problem

There is a tendency to try and deal with incidents of online abuse or trolling by keeping it within the party. However, many inappropriate online behaviours are actually illegal, for example, online harassment. If you think someone has committed a criminal offense, you should report it to the police.

For more information about what bullying and harassment is and how to tackle it, please see the Party Culture section of the Equal Representation in Politics tool.

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