  COVID-19 has given rise to malicious content online, including online abuse
and hate toward British MPs. In order to understand and contextualise the level
of abuse MPs receive, we consider how ministers use social media to communicate
about the crisis, and the citizen engagement that this generates. The focus of
the paper is on a large-scale, mixed methods study of abusive and antagonistic
responses to UK politicians during the pandemic from early February to late May
2020. We find that pressing subjects such as financial concerns attract high
levels of engagement, but not necessarily abusive dialogue. Rather, criticising
authorities appears to attract higher levels of abuse. In particular, those who
carry the flame for subjects like racism and inequality, may be accused of
virtue signalling or receive higher abuse levels due to the topics they are
required by their role to address. This work contributes to the wider
understanding of abusive language online, in particular that which is directed
at public officials.
