A journalist says she believes she is targeted for online abuse due to the fact that she is a woman, and from Northern Ireland.
Aoife Moore, the Irish Examiner's political correspondent, says the abuse intensified after she covered the Golfgate scandal in 2020.
The Derry native told Sean Moncrieff she believes this is because certain people do not like to be challenged.
"Golfgate catapulted myself and Paul [Hosford] to a higher level in terms of being more publicly known, and that has in turn resulted in quite a lot of daily abuse for me.
"Female journalists the world over get a lot more abuse than male journalists.
"And I think me being Northern, and I think being a woman and looking a certain way, compounds that.
"But the abuse that I get online was definitely made a lot worse after Golfgate."
Golfgate journalist @aoifegracemoore published details of the the Oireachtas Golf Society event with colleague @PTHosford. Today she spoke on @SeanMoncrieff about the online abuse she has received since. pic.twitter.com/ZAjT7J9wqR
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) January 10, 2022
Put to her by Sean Moncrieff that some Twitter users are in the mindset that because she is from Derry "that automatically means you're a member of the IRA", she says: "It's also the fact that I'm proud to be from the North.
"Why wouldn't I be proud to be from Derry? It's the centre of the universe - it's the best place in the world.
"And I think it's a very narrow-minded view and it comes from people being very threatened.
"I think no one wants to have their school of thought challenged.
"People of a certain age, especially men of a certain age, have made their mind up about the North.
"Then when people like me come down here and I have my own thoughts and views and opinions, they need to put me in a box because they don't want to be challenged on their world view.
"And I think that makes them nervous."
Aoife says she knows she is not alone in this.
"Most of the abuse that I get is very much that I am a terrorist sympathizer, that I am a member of Sinn Féin, a Sinn Féin plant and everything from having affairs with married journalists.
"There is no bottom to this barrel that they won't scrape, and I would say I know that I am not alone.
"A lot of female journalists get similar abuse - but I think the fact that I'm one of the few Northerners in Leinster House as well it doesn't help anything".
