Australian LGBTIQ+ politicians were hit with vile online abuse at the last federal election. The coming campaign could be even worse
- Written by: Elise Stephenson, Deputy Director, Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Australian National University
Newly published research[1] has found clear evidence that openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer+ (LGBTIQ+) Australian politicians were disproportionately targeted with personal abuse on social media at the last federal election. Given global trends, it’s unlikely to be any different this year.
Simply logging off is not an option for candidates, who need to communicate with voters. As a result, some politicians will continue to face risky online visibility.
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter/X, hate speech has surged[2], particularly for public figures such as parliamentarians.
So what do these trends mean for queer candidates ahead of this year’s election? And why does it matter for the next generation of politically engaged young people?
Queer politicians targeted
We analysed more than 100,000 tweets across the Twitter profiles of eight openly queer politicians and candidates (Penny Wong, Julian Hill, Nita Green, Tim Wilson, Janet Rice, Rachael Jacobs, Claire Garton, Stephen Bates) during the 2022 federal election campaign. We compared them with eight other politicians (Zoe Daniel, Graham Perrett, Lidia Thorpe, Anthony Chisholm, Barbara Pocock, Simon Birmingham, Deborah O'Neill, David Shoebridge) in the same period.
We suspected that political hopefuls who publicly identified as LGBTIQ+ may have experienced greater levels of abuse and harassment. But what we found surprised us.
The level of online intimidation was roughly the same for queer and non-queer politicians. However, the type of abuse differed significantly.
Queer politicians endured highly personal harassment that specifically targeted their gender or physical appearance. They suffered nasty queer-specific slurs, transphobic messages and ableist language. Essentially, nothing that was related to their policies or politics.
Meanwhile, straight, cisgender[3] politicians received harassment that was typically political in nature. More of it focused on their party or platform. It wasn’t as personal (with the exception of Thorpe, who received high levels of racist abuse). While overtly hostile, for straight politicians in general much of the harassment received might be considered an unavoidable part of the democratic political process in the social media age.
Our research provides a useful retrospective of some of the vitriol that proliferated during the last election.
One such event began with YouTube commentator Jordan Shanks breaking a salacious story of repeated sexual misconduct[4] by staffers in Canberra, purportedly in MPs offices and in the parliamentary multi-faith prayer room.
Our data tracked the way queer male politicians were wrongly affiliated and tagged in the scandal. They were unfairly accused and ridiculed. The unfounded attacks were non-partisan, involving politicians from across the major parties. This indicated a single point of commonality – their sexuality.
Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who had no involvement in the scandal, received over 2000 tweets explicitly mentioning the incident. Many were overtly homophobic, using terms such as “toy boy”, “rentboy”, “parasite” and “prayer room pervert”.
How it puts off politically engaged young people
The data indicates that queer politicians face a double bind. The personal hate they experience negatively impacts them as individuals and also distracts from genuine political debate. Trolling, hate speech, and a prohibitive online environment stymies open and constructive political dialogue.
Furthermore, identity based harassment discourages queer people from pursuing political careers in the first place. Or staying in politics once they’ve experienced the hate. It erodes their sense of safety when engaging in public discourse and undermines the foundations upon which democracy is built.
In a follow-up study[6] of 98 politically engaged, young gender and sexuality diverse people, we found that online violence and a lack of workplace safety were some of the biggest barriers for them in considering a career in politics.
The upcoming election
We expect the personal harassment of queer politicians will continue to escalate across multiple platforms, including X, Facebook and Instagram.
For instance, we have seen a sharp rise[7] in anti-LGBTIQ+ hate and extremism across the United States. Online spaces are likely to become even less safe for queer politicians in 2025, than they were in 2022.
Big tech is making it easier for abuse and harassment to flourish in the online world.
Musk has fired[8] 80% of engineers responsible for content regulation on X. He has also liked transphobic tweets and deemed the words “cis and "cisgender ” to be slurs, that were subsequently banned on X.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has also removed protections[9] that prevented hate speech on Facebook.
More users are deserting[10] X due to the malicious content and lack of safeguards. But with a closely integrated social media environment, online violence can follow politicians across platforms, both social and legacy. There is no escaping the bile.
Demanding better of online platforms
Social media regulation is difficult. Tech giants have already threatened to withdraw their services from Australia[11] over laws that would force them to pay for news content.
Online platforms may claim to only be the “messenger”, but the reality is that design features like anonymity and business decisions like removing content moderation will cause even more harm.
Until a critical mass of countries demand better protections, some individuals, including queer politicians, will always be at a disadvantage in this asymmetric online war.
References
- ^ research (cdn.theconversation.com)
- ^ surged (theconversation.com)
- ^ cisgender (theconversation.com)
- ^ misconduct (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ Luis Ascui/AAP (photos.aap.com.au)
- ^ a follow-up study (giwl.anu.edu.au)
- ^ sharp rise (qnews.com.au)
- ^ fired (www.forbes.com.au)
- ^ protections (apnews.com)
- ^ deserting (www.nbcnews.com)
- ^ Australia (www.afr.com)
Authors: Elise Stephenson, Deputy Director, Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Australian National University
