Author Archive

Dr Rosalynd Southern (University of Liverpool)

Rosalynd Southern is Senior Lecturer in Political Communication in the University of Liverpool's Department of Communication and Media.

An open mouth with an exposed tongue revealing a boxing glove - a metaphor for fighting talk.

Back in November, the BBC published a report into the online abuse (or ‘toxicity’ as the report termed it) that MPs suffer on social media. The report was eight months in the making and put an AI tool that had been built by the BBC themselves at the heart of the research. However, upon the publishing of the research to much fanfare online, flaws in the report became swiftly apparent. The BBC had linked directly to the tool itself in the report, which allowed anyone to test the tool. Users began to test certain slurs, particularly those of a racialised nature. Highly offensive terms for Jewish, Black and Hispanic people went entirely unrecognised by the tool. Well known far-Right and …