Hate Speech is a growing issue in sports and while the general feeling is that it may not yet be at an alarming level at home, the timing of educating athletes and fans should be sooner instead of being delayed.
Although some hate speech can be seen as a “joke” in the beginning, they can become harsh and hurt an athlete’s feelings. And it doesn’t stop with the athlete. Coaches and other officials can be on the receiving end also. Now mind you, this is different from someone offering constructive criticism or backing up their beliefs with factual information. But we are also seeing some degrading and derogatory comments that should not be tolerated. Sometimes only so much can be ignored.
Rather than staying silent or hiding comments, an increasing number of international brands are calling out the abusive behaviour of online trolls by drawing attention to the real-life impact of hate speech.
Trolls are the source of some of the internet’s vilest abuse. And any brand prepared to take a stand with a purposeful campaign is often first in the firing line to experience racist, homophobic, discriminatory or sexist hate speech, according to marketingweek.com.
But rather than just targeting brands, comments often personally attack the individuals involved, meaning businesses have got to be prepared to take responsibility and help protect the stars of their ads. The same must apply to sports teams and organisations. Research shows that 89% of brands silence hateful comments online by deleting or hiding them as they find it difficult to tread the line between encouraging debate and tackling hate speech. This is a growing trend online with local sports.
It happens with Windies Cricket, local football and even the Secondary Schools Football League and other youth sports where teams fans and opposing fans can get carried away during the season.
Sport England was prepared for a backlash when releasing both iterations of its ‘This Girl Can’ campaigns, providing support for the women featured on how to react if they received any negative comments.
If the comment was, for example, about why the campaign was targeting women, Sport England would let the discussion unfold, however, if the conversation turned abusive, offensive or humiliating towards any of the women it would be taken down and the perpetrator blocked.
Kate Dale, Sport England’s campaign lead for This Girl Can and branded campaigns, argues that brands have a responsibility to protect not just the people featured in their campaigns, but also to the wider community on their social channels. It is said that that social media pages are public spaces and brands and organisations need to think about behaviour in these areas in the same way they would on their shop floor, in their offices, customer service departments and their events.
Fare network is an international organisation with more than 150 members in nearly 40 European countries also with activists in the United States, South Africa, St. Lucia and Brazil.
Fare brings together individuals, informal groups and organisations combating inequality in football and use sports as a means for social change. In 2017 they launched a programme for sports trainers to enrol in online training sessions to combat hate speech and discrimination in sport. The sessions provided participants with both theoretical and practical tools to use in their work as football trainers.
The sessions focused on the narrative of hate speech and provided the participants with background information on the topic and an introduction to the no hate campaign. Additionally, it provided educational and practical tools to detect and report hate speech, as well as provide them with practical examples to organise an Action Day. This kind of program could prove to be useful in the local sporting arena.
French MPs recently passed a landmark law to fight online hate speech which will oblige social media networks to remove offending content within 24 hours and create a new button to enable users to flag abuse. Tech giants including Facebook and YouTube announced crackdowns on hateful and violent content in recent months. Laetitia Avia, an MP who drafted the bill, said. She added that online hate speech was "a public health issue" which "the vast majority of French people have seen or experienced".
The "massive increase" in hate crime in football is "very worrying", Kick It Out chief executive Roisin Wood said last year. Taking into account incidents at grounds and on social media, there has been a 59% increase in cases of discrimination across England's top four leagues as well as in the top four tiers of non-league football and the grassroots game.
Lasts season 46% of the discrimination incidents have occurred at professional games, 39% were on social media and 15% in the grassroots game. Those numbers are alarming. For us here and in the region, we have a responsibility to protect our own where we can. Don't you agree that we already have too much hate and negativity to deal with outside of the sporting world? Let's try to instead have a meaningful impact where possible.
Editor's Note
Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Media. He is a former FIFA Media Officer at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. He is also currently a CONCACAF Competitions Media Officer and has travelled extensively, experiencing and learning from different cultures and lifestyles because of sport and media over the past 20 years.