Men are more than twice as likely as women to be victims of trolling on Twitter, but are the ones most responsible for the bullying, it has been revealed.

According to an analysis of more than 2million messages sent to celebrities, politicians and journalists - one in every 20 sent to prominent male figures was abusive compared to only one in 70 for females.

Piers Morgan is hit by the most hate-filled messages, with 8.4 per cent of the tweets he receives including derogatory comments.

Piers Morgan (left) is most targeted with trolls, with 8.4 per cent of the messages he receives being offensive, while 2.6 per cent sent to Ricky Gervais (right) were degrading

For comedian Ricky Gervais, 2.6 per cent of tweets are abusive, while former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins is the female figure most likely to be trolled.

However, according to the figures published by The Sunday Times, popstars such as Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora and Olly Murs are treated politely when it came to communicating on the social media site.

Female journalists including Susanna Reid, who presents ITV's Good Morning Britain, were the only group who faced more abuse than their male counterparts - with 5.22 per cent of their messages containing personal insults.

But politicians such as Baroness Warsi, who resigned from the coalition earlier this month in opposition to the Government's approach to Gaza, has only received a sixth of the abuse experienced by the likes of John Prescott.

One Direction member Niall Horan - who attracted 25,000 abusive messages out of a total of 12.6m - had to be excluded from the study because the results would have distorted the outcome.

Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins is the female celebrity targeted by the highest number of trolls

A separate study by Carl Miller, research director at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, found that women were more hostile to other women, while men are also likely to be offensive to someone of the same gender.

Last year Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow campaigned for Twitter to introduce an 'abuse button' after Caroline Criado-Perez was trolled for suggesting that Jane Austen should be on the new £10 note.

The study published by think thank Demos was conducted using software co-developed by researchers from Demos and also academics from the University of Sussex.

Research Director for the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos, Carl Miller, who co-authored the report said: 'Receiving criticism has long been part and parcel of being in the public eye. But Twitter is providing newer, more direct ways, for the public to hurl abuse at celebrities and prominent personalities.

'We found that not only are men more often the target of this abuse, but are also more likely to be the ones behind the attacks.

'Social media is now an important part of social life and researching it is vital to understand the world that we now live in. It allows us to gather more evidence about society and politics than ever before, spot emerging problems, and, above all help us know what to do about them.