The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was the main target of a hate campaign on the social media platform Twitter, according to a new report.
Her husband Prince Harry was also targeted in the trolling campaign.
After analysing 114,000 tweets related to the Duke and Duchess, Twitter analytics provider Bot Sentinel found 70 per cent of the most hateful tweets directed towards the pair came from just 83 accounts.
The accounts had a combined 187,631 followers and a unique potential reach of 17 million users.
Bot Sentinel discovered 40 per cent of the accounts had previously been suspended by Twitter and they were employing tactics to avoid being shut down again.
"Some put 'parody' in their profiles, although it wasn’t a parody account. Others would use racist coded language about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to avoid detection," the report read.
"We also observed several accounts either lock or completely deactivate their profiles to preserve their accounts."
Examples of harassment attached in the report include the Duchess of Sussex - whose mother is African American and father Caucasian - being accused of "playing [a] victim of racial discrimination".
The Duchess of Sussex has previously spoken out about being the subject of online vitriol, which escalated in 2019 during her pregnancy.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle speak at the 2021 Global Citizen Live event. Source: AAP
“I’m told that in 2019 I was the most trolled person in the entire world, male or female. Now, eight months of that I wasn’t even visible, I was on maternity leave or with a baby," she said in a podcast last year.
She said the abuse was almost "unsurvivable".
"I don’t care if you’re 15 or 25, if people are saying things about you that aren’t true, what that does to your mental and emotional health is so damaging."
In an intimate interview with ITV back in 2019, the duchess admitted not many people had asked if she was "okay" as she navigated immense media scrutiny.
Journalist Tom Bradby, a guest at Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding, asked the duchess about "the impact on your physical and mental health of all the pressure that you clearly feel under."
She responded: "You add this on top of trying to be a new mum or a newlywed and I guess, thank you for asking because not many people have asked if I'm okay but it's a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes."
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, the Duchess of Sussex claimed an unnamed member of the Royal Family expressed concern about how dark her son Archie's skin would be before his birth, and that such worries explained why he was not given the title of prince.
Asked whether there were concerns that her child would be "too brown" and that would be a problem, the duchess said: "If that is the assumption you are making, that is a pretty safe one".
She said she ended up having suicidal thoughts and considered self-harm after asking for help, but was told it would not be a good look.
"I just didn't want to be alive anymore," she said.
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