Congleton MP Fiona Bruce receives an average of 0.6 'toxic' tweets per week.

That's according to a new study conducted by the BBC Shared Data Unit. The data collecting was conducted over a six-week period earlier this year.

They analysed 3 million tweets mentioning all 650 MPs over a six-week period to find out just how much of that could be classed as abuse.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, machine learning was used to rate each tweet for toxicity.

For a tweet to be deemed as toxic, the definition reads 'toxicity is a "rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make someone leave a conversation". 

Congleton's Conservative MP Fiona Bruce received four toxic tweets over the six-week study. For context, Congleton's MP since 2010 received 487 tweets of any tone in this period, including the four which were marked as 'toxic'.

This means that 0.8% of her tweets were deemed toxic, which ranks her as one of the lowest MPs to receive grief on Twitter. She ranked 508th out of 650 MPs for 'toxic' tweets.

Bruce had much less instances than neighbouring constituency MPs such as Tatton's Esther McVey, who received 111 toxic tweets. Macclesfield's MP David Rutley - who like McVey and Bruce identify as a Conservative - received six.

Fellow Tory and Crewe MP Kieran Mullan received 17, meanwhile High Peak MP Robert Largan received 31.

Nationally, more than 130,000 tweets mentioning MPs were considered likely to be toxic, and 20,000 severely toxic.

"Stupid" and "pathetic" were the two most commonly used adjectives in those tweets.  

Across the UK, female MPs were more likely to be called "thick" and "ignorant" and be subject to sexualised language while their male counterparts were more likely to be called "liars".

All 20 of the MPs to receive the most abuse proportionally were not members of the cabinet or shadow cabinet. 

One British user sent 128 toxic-rated tweets to male MPs and 85 to female MPs during the time period.

Conservative MPs were nearly twice as likely as a Labour MP to receive a tweet classed as severely toxic.

Among the high profile MPs, Priti Patel ranked 7th with 4110 toxic-rated tweets, Matt Hancock got 2359, and then-PM Boris Johnson had 18907 tweets of this kind.

The study took place from March to April earlier this year.

Twitter and Fiona Bruce MP will be contacted for comment.

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