NEW data accumulated by the BBC has shed light on the online abuse received by Cornwall's MPs on the social media platform Twitter.

The BBC's Shared Data Unit analysed three million tweets mentioning MPs over a six-week period between March and April 2022 to find out just how much of that could be classed as abuse.

Despite not being as well known as some of their colleagues in government, the five Cornwall MPs who have Twitter profiles are still no less likely to be victims to online abuse.

Of Cornwall's MPs, North Cornwall MP, Scott Mann, received the highest number of tweets described as 'toxic' with 29 out of the 430 Tweets aimed at him across the six-week period being classified as such.

Next up was St Austell and Newquay MP, Steve Double, with 26 out of 743 Tweets aimed at him being classified as 'toxic.'

Truro and Falmouth MP, Cherilyn Mackrory, received 19 'toxic' tweets out of the 965 directed at her, followed by South East Cornwall's Sheryll Murray, with 11 out of 544.

Finally, St Ives' Derek Thomas received the least tweets described as 'toxic,' with five out of 395 being classified as such.

The Packet has arranged the data into an interactive tool you can explore below.

The tweets were deemed to be 'toxic' by Perspective API - a machine-learning tool built to identify harmful conversations online.

It defines a toxic comment as a rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone want to leave a conversation.

The data also evaluated tweets that were analysed to be 'severely toxic,' with the results showing a smaller number of tweets being classified as such.

Scott Mann again topped the list with eleven tweets deemed to be 'severely toxic,' followed by Steve Double with eight, Sheryll Murray with four, and Cherilyn Mackrory and Derek Thomas both with three.

Nationally, the data indicated that more than 130,000 tweets mentioning MPs were considered likely to be toxic and 20,000 severely toxic and that "stupid" and "pathetic" were the two most commonly used adjectives in those tweets. 

Female MPs were also more likely to be called "thick" and "ignorant" and be subject to sexualised language, while their male counterparts were more likely to be called "liars."

It was also found that one user sent 128 toxic-rated tweets to male MPs and 85 to female MPs during the time period and that Conservative MPs were nearly twice as likely as a Labour MPs to receive a tweet classed as severely toxic.