SAMbot Federal Election: September 12-19, 2021

Our fifth report covers the final week of the campaign. It was quieter on Twitter compared to the intensity of last week, with fewer tweets overall.

From the beginning of the campaign on August 15 to date, SAM has now analyzed more than 2 million tweets.

Weekly Snapshot

Key Findings

• The day before Election Day, Sunday, September 19, saw the highest amount of toxicity online.

• Justin Trudeau continued to receive the largest number and proportion of toxic tweets of all candidates tracked, with 22% labelled likely to be toxic.

• Erin O’Toole received fewer tweets this week, with 16% labelled likely to be toxic.

• Similarly, Jagmeet Singh received fewer tweets this week, with 14% labelled likely to be toxic.

• Of the 495,297 tweets analyzed from Sunday, September 12 12:00 ET to Sunday, September 19 11:59 ET:
• 85,788 were labelled as containing insults
• 40,393 were labelled as containing profanity
• 39,767 were labelled as containing threats
• 33,666 were labelled as containing identity attacks
• 19,657 were labelled as containing sexually explicit content

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Unless otherwise stated, tweets sent from Sunday, September 5 12:00 ET to Sunday, September 12 11:59 ET were analyzed in this week’s report.

SAM is tracking 210 male incumbent candidates, including Justin Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh, 88 female incumbent candidates, and two party leaders who did not have a seat in the last Parliament (Annamie Paul and Maxime Bernier). Review the full list.

For more detailed methodology, visit our FAQ page.

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How to cite: The Samara Centre for Democracy, SAMBot Federal Election: September 12-19, 2021, (Toronto: The Samara Centre for Democracy, 2021), www.samaracentre.ca/articles/sambot-federal-election-september-12-19-2021.