The Safer Politics project has been produced by the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Digital Politics, Media and Democracy (DigiPol) in co-operation with the Local Government Association and the Jo Cox Foundation and with funding from Research England.
The project is led by the University of Liverpool’s Reader in Global Journalism and Media, Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, working alongside Dr Rosalynd Southern, Senior Lecturer in Political Communication, Dr Emily Harmer, Senior Lecturer in Media, and Research Assistant Angela Ferguson.
Dr Emily Harmer and Dr Rosalynd Southern have co-authored a number of articles based on their extensive research into this subject. These include the following journal articles and book chapter:
Twitter, Incivility and “Everyday” Gendered Othering: An Analysis of Tweets Sent to UK Members of Parliament. This featured in an edition of Social Science Computer Review published in 2019
Digital microaggressions and everyday othering: an analysis of tweets sent to women members of Parliament in the UK. This featured in a special Gender and Online Politics edition of the Information, Communication and Society journal published in 2021
Othering Political Women: Online Misogyny, Racism and Ableism Towards Women in Public Life. This is a chapter written for a book called Online Othering, which was also edited by Dr Harmer alongside Dr Karen Lumsden from the University of Aberdeen. It was published in 2019
Their latest research has involved interviewing a range of women in politics to find out their experiences of being on the receiving end of online abuse, which was funded by the British Academy. Insights from this study have also informed this resource.
This project is part of a wider initiative on improving communicative safety for journalists and politicians online. As part of it, we also launched a one-stop platform on journalists' safety - https://safetyofjournalists.org - a joint initiative between the University of Liverpool and the Worlds of Journalism Study in co-operation with UNESCO.
