Women and black writers are the biggest victims of abusive online comments

Online abuse is a serious problem. While the likes of Twitter and Facebook are great platforms for trolls to indulge their hobby, it's the good, old-fashioned comments section where you'll find some of the most obvious examples of threats and abuse. The problem is so great that many websites have taken the seemingly drastic step of completely disabling comments on stories, while others do so on an individual basis for articles that could prove controversial.

Clearly this is less than ideal. In many ways it could be viewed as a form of censorship that curtails freedom of speech, and comments can be a valuable way to help a story to evolve. For many sites, comments are a black and white topic; on or off. Moderation -- again, often seen as a type of censorship -- is often employed, but this does little to stop abuse aimed at writers. The Guardian has conducted research into the abuse dealt out via comments on its site, and the findings make for disturbing reading.

It has been argued that the world of tech, and the internet, is dominated by white men and that there is more than a hint of racism and sexism. An article entitled The dark side of Guardian comments bears this out. In depth analysis of more than 70 million comments reveals that when looking at the top 10 'most abused' writers, 80 percent of them are women and 60 percent are black.

As the Guardian notes, the comments section of just about any website is often home to truly hateful abuse:

The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written 'below the line' is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face -- the Guardian is no exception.

This is not really surprising. The veil of anonymity, and the barrier of distance, that the web affords trolls means people often feel free to unleash torrents of abuse that would be unimaginable in another medium. But it is the breakdown of the most abused writers that is both interesting and disturbing, confirming fears that sexism and racism are rife online.

The Guardian itself points out that the majority of its opinion writers are white men. While many would view this as an issue in itself, these same white men do not find themselves to be on the receiving end of the majority of abuse. Regardless of topic, articles written by women result in more trolling and abuse than those written by men.

The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the 'top 10', one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.

What's particularly interesting is that in stereotypically male arenas such as sport and technology, female writers found themselves on the end of more comments deemed blockable by moderators. Some individual topics also attracted more unpleasant comments than others:

We also found that some subjects attracted more abusive or disruptive comments than others. Conversations about crosswords, cricket, horse racing and jazz were respectful; discussions about the Israel/Palestine conflict were not. Articles about feminism attracted very high levels of blocked comments. And so did rape.

The primary focus of the analysis was the different reception men and women enjoyed, but it did reveal more.

We focused on gender in this research partly because we wanted to test the theory that women experience more abuse than men. But both writers and moderators observe that ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBT people also appear to experience a disproportionate amount of abuse.

Running a website means walking a narrow line between saying 'anything goes' and becoming over-enthusiastic with the ban hammer. The Guardian's research throws some interesting light on just how complicated the commenting ecosystem is. Do you give people a free rein to say whatever they want -- risking things going wildly off-topic or getting abusive and personal -- or do you risk accusations of limiting free speech by stepping in as a moderator when things get out of hand?

It's not an easy question to answer, and it's made all the more difficult once gender and race are thrown into the equation.

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