According to the Kick it Out campaign there has been 134,400 derogatory posts on social media so far this season.
• 16,800 discriminatory posts a month
• 551 of them per day
• 1 abusive mention every 2.6 minutes
What are the subjects the abusers target?
Men are to blame for 78% while woman make up the remaining 22% of abusers. Premier League leaders Chelsea also lead the list in abuse with 20,000 discriminatory posts mentioning the west London club between last August and March of 2015.
When it comes to individual players Liverpool’s Mario Balotelli was the most abused with 8,000 plus comments of which 52% were racist followed by Arsenal’s Danny Welbeck with 1,700 of which 50% were racist.
The social media that was used the most will come as no surprise with Twitter accounting for 88% of the 134,400 discriminatory posts.
It was followed by:
• Facebook (8%)
• Forums (3%)
• Blogs (1%)
Grunge matches or big team rivalries accounted for much of the abuse as you can see in the figures below.
The Kick it Out campaign wants more to be done in order to stamp out hate crime on social media and is considering setting up a group to fight the problem and plans to meet with all those involved in football, the policy and Internet safety bodies to come up with a solution.
Kick It Out wants more to be done to tackle football-related hate crime across social media.
It is exploring the possibility of setting up an expert group to tackle the problem and as part of that, plans to meet with those working in football, the police, internet safety bodies and various social media platforms to discuss what can be done.
Twitter has an abusive behaviour policy, while Facebook has a community standards page which outlines its policies to help keep users safe.
When asked what he thought of the problem BBC sports editor Dan Roan said: “These worrying findings underline the growing problem in sport – but especially in football – of discriminatory abuse by trolls via the internet, and campaigners will now hope it leads to renewed efforts to tackle it.
“Kick It Out has grown frustrated by what it sees as a lack of co-ordination between the police and social media platforms over malicious posts, and also wants the clubs to do more.
“Twitter says it is being proactive, but the anonymity afforded to online users can make it difficult to track down offenders. Social media enables fans get closer than ever to players, but it also helps a minority to abuse and insult. Stamping that out will be extremely difficult, but this could be an important stage in that effort.”
