  Concerns have reached the mainstream about how social media are affecting
political outcomes. One trajectory for this is the exposure of politicians to
online abuse. In this paper we use 1.4 million tweets from the months before
the 2015 and 2017 UK general elections to explore the abuse directed at
politicians. This collection allows us to look at abuse broken down by both
party and gender and aimed at specific Members of Parliament. It also allows us
to investigate the characteristics of those who send abuse and their topics of
interest. Results show that in both absolute and proportional terms, abuse
increased substantially in 2017 compared with 2015. Abusive replies are
somewhat less directed at women and those not in the currently governing party.
Those who send the abuse may be issue-focused, or they may repeatedly target an
individual. In the latter category, accounts are more likely to be throwaway.
Those sending abuse have a wide range of topical triggers, including borders
and terrorism.
