Women are responsible for at least half of all misogynistic posts on the internet, a study suggests.

The think tank Demos tracked the number of times that the words ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ were used on the social media site Twitter – and found that in Britain alone, 10,000 such tweets were sent.

Worldwide, no less than 50 per cent of the hundreds of thousands of aggressive tweets using these words were sent by women, with 40 per cent sent by men. The rest were sent by organisations or users whose gender cannot be classified.

The author of the study said the findings suggested that misogyny is being ‘internalised and reiterated by women themselves’.

The Reclaim the Internet campaign launched its call for an end to abuse on social media in Westminster today. The campaign is supported by, from left, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, former Tory culture secretary Maria Miller, former Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper and former Liberal Democrat minister Jo Swinson

The survey also indicated that Twitter users are being bombarded with references to pornography – even though its minimum age requirement is only 13.

The figures were revealed on the day that five MPs and former MPs, led by former Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper, launched a ‘Reclaim the Internet’ campaign to tackle hate speech and abuse on social media.

She was joined by former culture secretary Maria Miller, Labour MPs Stella Creasy and Jess Philips and the Liberal Democrat, Jo Swinson, who lost her seat at the last election.

The Demos survey found that over a three-week period earlier this year, there were 213,000 tweets containing aggressive uses of the words ‘slut’ or ‘whore’

Jack Dale, from the think tank, wrote: ‘This represents over 9,000 aggressively misogynistic tweets sent per day worldwide during this period, with 80,000 Twitter users targeted by this trolling.

‘Interestingly, this study reflects the findings of out 2014 report, in which women were as comfortable using misogynistic language as men.

‘These figures suggest that misogyny is being internalised and reiterated by women themselves.

'This use of language is not, therefore, confined to one discrete online group but rather persists throughout society – making this issue more complex than it first appears.’

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has said that tackling abuse is a priority.

The campaign launched on the day it was revealed the majority of online and social media abuse against women is made by women

Miss Cooper told the BBC: ‘The truth is nobody knows what the best answers are.

‘There is more when there is criminal abuse, for example rape threats, that the police should be doing, but what is the responsibility of everyone else?

'What more should social media platforms be using?’

The Demos study found that, in the UK, 6,500 unique users were targeted by 10,000 explicitly aggressive and misogynistic tweets.

Internationally, over 200,000 aggressive tweets using the same terms were sent to 80,000 people in the same three weeks.

Using sophisticated in-house technology, Demos built algorithms to separate tweets being used in explicitly aggressive ways, from instances of self-identification, and those that were more conversational in tone or commenting on issues related to misogyny, such as referring to ‘slut shaming’, ‘slut walks’.

The campaign is the creation of Ms Cooper (left) and it has won cross party backing, including from former Tory minister Ms Miller (right)

Alex Krasodomski-Jones, researcher in the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, said: ‘It is clear that just as the digital world has created new opportunities for public debate and social interaction, it has also built new battlegrounds for the worst aspects of human behaviour.

‘This study provides a birds-eye snapshot of what is ultimately a very personal and often traumatic experience for women.

'While we have focused on Twitter, who are considerably more generous in sharing their data with researchers like us, it’s important to note that misogyny is prevalent across all social media, and we must make sure that the other big tech companies are also involved in discussions around education and developing solutions.

‘This is less about policing the internet than it is a stark reminder that we are frequently not as good citizens online as we are offline.’

Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Kira O’Connor, said: ‘Hateful conduct has no place on the Twitter platform and is a violation of our terms of service.