In April 2021, athletes and several sports such as football, cricket, rugby union and rugby league joined a four-day boycott of social media in an attempt to tackle abuse and discrimination on their platformsHomophobia is responsible for a large portion of abuse aimed at footballers and basketballers in the men’s and women’s game, according to a new report.Of more than 1,500 abusive posts included in the report, homophobic abuse was 40% of posts targeted at male footballers, 27% of that sent to female football players, 46% of the abuse aimed at male basketballers and 19% of that posted to female basketball players.Messages directed at the athletes also included racism, sexism and ableism.The joint report into online abuse and its impact on performance and mental well-being was conducted by AI company Signify, for FifPro, the NBPA and the WNBPA, which are the global unions representing male and female athletes in football and basketball.It described the 1,558 abusive posts sent from 1,455 unique accounts as “shocking”. The posts were taken from social media platform Twitter for five months between May and September 2021 and directed at 160 of the most high-profile male and female footballers and basketball players across the biggest leagues in Europe, the United States and South America.The report focused on “targeted online abuse” – messages that were directed at or include… Click below to read the full story from BBC Sport
Read More