SOCIAL media is now “a place of hate”,  Arlene Foster has said, as she revealed trolls had issued death threats against her and her children.

The former Northern Ireland First Minister, who is leaving politics after a recent internal coup ousted her as DUP leader, said she wanted to use her own experience to help tackle the problem of online abuse. 

She told Talk Radio: “As politicians we have to be challenged and there has to be a space for debate. I’m not sure social media… is the best place. It has become … a place of hate, a place of abuse.”

She claimed some Twitter accounts were only set up in order to attack other users.

She said: “I feel there is a real need to stamp that out because I actually think it prevents some young people from getting involved in politics and getting involved in public life, which is really regrettable, especially young women.” 

Mrs Foster said she stopped engaging on Twitter herself, and left it to her staff, as the abuse was starting to affect her.

She said that after she and deputy FM Michelle O’Neill did on outdoor press conference because of Covid last year there were some "beautiful trees behind us... and someone said ‘nice trees behind you, you should be hanging from one’."

Mrs Foster successfully sued TV personality Dr Christian Jessen for libel over a tweet that wrongly claimed she had been having an affair.

She said she took the case because she “fundamentally felt that it was so wrong to make allegations about my family … and I wasn’t prepared to accept that.”

Mrs Foster said her children are aged between 14 and 21, and are all active on social media.

She said they and her husband knew the false affair rumour was not true.

“But it really got into the space where it was so hurtful because people were asking questions about our relationship … it became really invasive in my private life and my family, which I have gone some way to protect over my years as a politician, and I felt I had to act and that’s why I took the case,” she said.

Mrs Foster said she wanted her children to have as normal a life as they could when she was First Minister, but that it had been tough.

“I’m glad to say most people did respect their privacy, did allow them to do what they needed to do, but it’s when people start to send them death threats, and say that they hoped they die in a horrible way, you do have to react and you do have to protect, and the mother instinct comes out.

“I’m sure I’m not alone in that, I’m sure there are many politicians who have that said about their children … it is awful. I want to use my experience and my platform to try and deal with some of these social media trolls.”