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It’s not your imagination. Political discourse on Twitter really has grown meaner in recent years, according to a new study.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, found that the level of incivility in tweets by members of Congress increased by 23% between 2009 and 2019 — a change the study’s authors attribute in part to how Twitter’s “like” and “retweet” buttons reinforce the spread of toxic content.

Its findings mark “the first robust evidence that incivility is rising among American politicians on Twitter,” wrote the study’s authors, hailing from several U.S. and Canadian universities.

Researchers examined 1.3 million tweets from official congressional accounts between 2009 and 2019. To quantify the levels of incivility, they used artificial intelligence to analyze the messages and assign a toxicity score from 0 to 100, reflecting the likelihood that someone would consider the text to be rude or disrespectful.

The analysis classified a 2009 tweet by then-Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) with a high incivility score of 45.1 for accusing a rival of “going AWOL” from his congressional post. And a 2019 tweet by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) — which said another politician was “endorsing infanticide & proudly doing it!” — scored at 47.6.

To some degree, the increasingly antagonistic tone is due to more civil members of Congress being replaced by less civil ones, the study says. But the findings attribute more of the shift to members themselves changing over time and posting more provocative tweets.

The increase in incivility was most pronounced among liberal Democrats, especially in the first half of President Trump’s term.

“They were much more likely to be reacting negatively to Donald Trump — both his behaviors and his tweets,” said Robb Willer, a co-author and director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University.

The study analyzed tweets during President Obama’s two terms and the first two years of Trump’s presidency. (The sample did not include posts from the contentious 2020 election or the start of President Biden’s term.)

The analysis also evaluated Obama’s and Trump’s tweets. Obama’s posts had an average incivility score of 13.4, which remained fairly steady over his two terms. In Trump’s first year, his score was 18.8, and it climbed to 23.0 by 2019.

The study didn’t place any moral judgments on Twitter incivility, Willer said. People sending harshly worded tweets “might have all sorts of explanations that might be morally well-founded and valid for why they engaged in the speech they did.”

Whatever the motivation, the more toxic tweets stand out in Twitter’s crowded online platform. The average congressional tweets were not especially uncivil, with relatively low scores. But the tweets with higher toxicity scores tended to get much more attention, via retweets and likes, which increase the public’s exposures to such messages and make incivility seem more prominent than it actually is, according to the study.

The study’s results indicate “the people running these accounts are learning from these metrics they can see and doing more of whatever gets likes and retweets,” Willer said.

But, as the common Twitter disclaimer goes, retweets and likes don’t equal endorsement. People may retweet a message to draw attention to content they dislike, for example. Willer said their research indicated that users are largely not fond of toxic tweets, despite appearances to the contrary.

“There’s a possibility here that the Twitter platform, with its pretty spare metrics, may be misleading people that certain tweets are more popular with people … than they really are,” Willer said.

Just as congressional Twitter feeds have grown more toxic, so have the tweets of the general population, the authors said, based on a rough sample of civilian posts.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), one of the most prolific tweeters of California’s congressional delegation, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that incivility has grown on the platform — which he blamed partly on anonymous users and bots. His own feed has plenty of pointed messages to Republicans, often delivered with dry humor, as well as standard fare highlighting his work in Congress.

After 13 years on the platform, Lieu said it’s still hard to predict what will take off in the Twittersphere.

“Sometimes I’ll write what I think is an amazing tweet about a very important policy point and get only a few” likes or retweets, he said. But an evening observation that Scotch and peanut butter make a tasty combination will yield “astronomical” engagement.

One consistent factor for a viral tweet: Trump.

“What I’ve found is in the last five years, when the former president would say something stupid or say something false, and I responded to that, that would get higher engagement,” Lieu said. “If the former president is going to say 27 false things a week, I’m going to try to highlight all 27 false things he said.”

While Twitter has not been seen as a hub of civility for some time, some on the platform expressed fears this week that the tone may worsen now that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is set to take the reins. Musk says Twitter’s current system of content moderation clamps down on speech. He has said he wants fewer restrictions on what can and cannot be posted, although he has not given many specifics; users have warned that loosening the rules could lead to upticks in harassment, abuse or pornographic images.

Republicans, meanwhile, have celebrated Musk’s takeover, anticipating he will lift moderation that they see as silencing their views. Among other issues, they object to Trump and other prominent right-wing politicians being blocked or suspended from the site. And Twitter’s fact-checking of false claims of election fraud and COVID-19 misinformation has had a disproportionate effect on right-leaning accounts.

“The most uncivil aspect of Twitter is the company’s transparent censoring of free speech and silencing of conservatives,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall). “Additionally, the platform will not reach its potential or best serve its users until it demonstrates a commitment to fundamental fairness. I’m optimistic that may soon happen.”

Muslims are embroiled in yet another war, but this one isn’t in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or another predominantly Islamic region.

The battleground is Michigan. New York. Minnesota. Or anywhere else in the U.S. where a politician with a name like Abdul El-Sayed, Zohran Mamdani or Ilhan Omar have run for office — and won.

Today’s primary target is Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate El-Sayed. Since his victory in August, the right’s main strategy to beat him this fall is a familiar one: paint El-Sayed, the Muslim son of Egyptian immigrants, as an anti-American extremist.

Vice President JD Vance recently told a crowd that “there’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil,” suggesting that Democratic nominee represents a divisive ideology. Representative Nancy Mace warned of a larger problem when she said that “every single Muslim holding public office in America” is “a threat to both national security and our republic.” Senator Tommy Tuberville flat-out called El-Sayed a “terrorist.”

“The message is that these candidates are a civilizational threat that is going to destroy American society and Western civilization from within,” says Salam Al-Marayati, president and co-founder of the non-profit Muslim Public Affairs Council. “You saw that a lot when Mamdani was elected.”

And given that he was elected, the Islamophobia playbook may need an overhaul.

New York City Mayor Mamdani and El-Sayed are among the more than 255 Muslim elected officials serving across 26 states and at nearly every level of government, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That number includes a historical high of four Muslim Americans in Congress.

But as their political power has grown, so too has the bigoted rhetoric about the dangers of electing a Muslim to office. But now, there’s pushback.

CBS News, now under the leadership of conservative editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, caught flack this week for publishing a story with the headline: “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks.”

Criticisms of the piece were immediate, including commentary in The Atlantic that called the story a political dog whistle for using a tenuous connection to align El-Sayed’s name with the phrase “9/11 attacks.”

The pandemic-era posts from El-Sayed did not celebrate the tragedy or the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks. He instead compared the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11 attacks to the growing COVID-19 death toll in the U.S., and called for a strong response against the virus as there was to the 9/11 attacks. In the second tweet, El-Sayed wrote that more Americans had died from COVID than in the 9/11 attacks, so he hoped “that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty … like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.”

Hardly the smoking gun that puts him in an Afghan cave, scheming with bin Laden.

The tweets were deleted along with all of Al-Sayed’s other posts dated before July 2023. His campaign said he did so to prevent “old posts from being taken out of context.” Oh the irony.

Similar tactics were used against Mamdani in his run for mayor. After a particularly rousing speech leading up to his 2025 win, the New York Times noted that “…Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures [are] accusing him of promoting Islamic law, supporting terrorism and posing a threat to the safety of New Yorkers, especially Jews.”

Before Mamdani, Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was the subject of “Send her back” chants at Trump rallies. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) publicly referred to Omar as a member of the “Jihad Squad.”

Nevertheless, Omar became the first African refugee to become a Member of Congress when she assumed office in January of 2019.

“What we have found out from previous elections is that candidates like Abdul Sayed are speaking to the masses,” says Al-Marayati. “They’re not speaking to the Democratic and Republican establishment who believe in this hierarchical structure where you only have a few in control, whether it’s corporate influence or lobbies or a certain race and religion that that are on top and the rest of us are merely visitors who should just be thankful for getting the crumbs from the economy. [El-Sayed and Mamdani] are returning to the vision of a pluralistic democracy.”

The latest efforts to derail El-Sayed’s campaign include weaponizing his association with leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Piker, who earlier this year appeared on the campaign trail with El-Sayed, is a major influence among progressives and a bogeyman to establishment Republicans and Democrats alike. The right can’t stop talking about his sharp criticisms of MAGA leadership, disdain for US foreign policy, and his pro-Palestinian stance. The left is terrified of being associated with Piker.

Now the candidate is pressed daily to answer for things said by Piker’ stretching as far back as 2019, when the influencer commented that “America deserved 9/11” (a quote that was incorrectly attributed to El-Sayed). El-Sayed has denounced the statement as “stupid,” and Piker has walked back his words.

But the unyielding scrutiny over dubious associations doesn’t cut both ways. Relative to El-Sayed, there’s been little inquiry of Michigan’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mike Rogers, and his close ties with Pastor Lorenzo Sewell. A member of Roger’s faith advisory team, Sewell in August co-organized and led a “Christian Crusader March” and anti-Islam protest in Dearborn, MI alongside far-right activist and January 6 pardoned defendant Jake Lang.

Campaigns that leverage hate and fear against Muslim candidates and elected officials are nothing new, but they appear to be less effective with each passing election season. It’s possible more and more voters see through the prejudiced subterfuge, but it’s more likely that folks simply need a change.

“The real threat that Abdul Sayed represents is that he is knocking down that hierarchical structure, and that’s why you have the attacks on him of being a radical, being a terror sympathizer, being a threat to civilization,” says Al-Marayati. “When Thomas Jefferson was drafting the Charter on Religious Freedom, he included Muslims, and even he was accused of being a Muslim. So you’ve had this problem for a long time. Abdul Sayed’s affiliation with Thomas Jefferson is a badge of honor.”