Abstract :
Twitter, now known as X, is the most used social media platform for fans to interact, share their knowledge on the sport and critically analyze the performance of their respective clubs and players on a daily basis. While the platform has been extremely beneficial for both football clubs and fans, it’s still guilty of encouraging racism in the sport especially towards black football players. As the platform keeps giving a certain liberty to its users, football fans can racially abuse black football athletes whenever they drop a poor performance and Twitter over the last few years has been doing very little to combat this issue. Drawing insights from recent events in the football world, this paper examines how racism towards black football athletes is on the rise on Twitter while analysing the failure of the platform to fight against this ever-rising issue.
Introduction :
Social media has completely revolutionized the world we live in today and has formed an integral part of our daily lives since nearly a decade. In this highly digitalized world, social media has elevated itself into a unique force which reshapes the way people, societies and businesses interact. As Scherr & Wang (2021) explained, social media transformed itself from an undesirable source of information to an undeniable one. The football community is one which has the largest fanbase around the globe and social media is the go-to platform for these fans to analyse, criticize and share their knowledge on this sport. The social media platform Twitter, now known as X, is the most common platform used by fans to analyse, criticize and share their knowledge on the sport as well as football teams who use Twitter as their primary platform to post news and updates about their respective teams. However, social media is known to be a major driving factor in promoting racism and discrimination and football clubs and their athletes have been victims of this since the last decade on Twitter. As Coles & Lane (2023) analysed, racism and discrimination has become a norm on social media and is proliferating despite the multiple measures and policies being set to tackle those issues. As a result, the football world has been heavily hit by this issue as fans use several tactics on Twitter to racially abuse football players on their skin color, religion, ethnicity due to their poor performances on the pitch. Twitter allows racism and discrimination to thrive as it is the platform through which football fans interact the most and in recent years, black football athletes are the ones who have been primary victims of racism. Drawing insights from recent events in the football world, this paper examines how racism towards black football athletes is on the rise on Twitter while analysing the failure of the platform to fight against this ever-rising issue.
Discussion :
Football is a diverse sport where teams consist of a mixture of players from different religion, ethnicity and skin color. Racism in football is a never-ending issue and black athletes in this sport have been the primary victims of this abuse on twitter for a very long time. As Southern & Harmer (2019) analysed, racism towards black athletes is high and constant on Twitter compared to other social media platforms and is lacking behind massively when it comes to tackling racism and discrimination in football. On top of that, these athletes are racially abused on Twitter by their own fans as soon as they deliver poor performances on the pitch. A recent example of black racism in this sport is where England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed their penalties in a crucial penalty shootout which saw Italy being crowned champion in the Euro 2020 tournament. The aftermath of this match saw thousands of racist tweets targeted towards these three players where people were addressing them by the N-word, using monkey and banana emojis and calling for these players to be deported due to their African roots. As Cable et al., (2022) further elaborated, racist chants towards black athletes in stadiums have diminished over the years and have flourished on Twitter. Black athletes in football are victims of extreme discrimination as Twitter has given people the ability to tweet without restrictions hence enabling the racial slurs to be mixed with normal tweets in a football discussion forum. With the platform allowing people to tweet with freedom, people are given the liberty to racially abuse these athletes at any time. The discrimination is crystal clear as there is never a racist tweet targeted towards a white athlete no matter how poor their performance is while on the other hand the skin color of black players is instantly targeted as soon as they perform poorly and this is due to Twitter allowing these racist tweets to remain existent on their platform.
While fans continue to racially target these athletes on the platform, Twitter in itself is guilty of doing very little to combat these racist tweets and prevent further abuse towards these black athletes. As Kilvington & Price (2017) reported, the organisation Kick It Out was established all the way back in 1993 to tackle racism towards athletes. This organisation famously made its way to twitter where it’s supposed to track down racially discriminatory tweets and help the platform take down those tweets as well as finding the culprits. However, Twitter has failed miserably to delete those tweets over the years which ultimately increases racist tweets on the platform from users and raise the question whether the platform is just ignoring these issues. To further support this argument, Tekin & Drury (2021) reported that a survey conducted by The Guardian revealed that Twitter failed to delete 99% of racist tweets that were aimed at the England players after the Euro 2020 final. The survey further revealed that only one racist tweet was deleted while 99 other tweets remained online during the countdown to the world cup in 2022. This is still a recurring issue to this day as the racist tweets towards black athletes keep on increasing after every match and these racial tweets come in every form whether they are straight up abuse through words or by using specific emojis such as monkeys and bananas. With Twitter failing to delete racist tweets, it is undeniable that the millions of racist tweets towards players in the past remain existent on the platform and the addition of more racist slurs after every match will continue to haunt these athletes forever. With Twitter being the most used social media platform when it comes to football, the inability to delete racist tweets proves that black athletes will always be subject to racism due to their skin color. Hence, no matter how much football clubs and athletes continue to fight against the always rising issue of racism, Twitter has failed to act accordingly and support them.
In addition to this, Twitter allows users to post NSFW contents which is also a major factor in increasing racism towards black football athletes on Twitter. The term NSFW stands for “not safe for work” and is a marked content posted on platforms such as Twitter and reddit which usually contains images or videos portraying graphic violence, nudity, pornography, profanity, racist slurs or any other potentially distressing materials. Although Twitter issues a warning before viewing this type of content, it doesn’t do anything to eliminate the racist slurs targeted at the black athletes in the sport through these posts. The real issue here is Twitter allowing its users to post these contents in the first place where through the manipulation of images and videos, racist slurs are delivered towards these athletes. As Corradini et al., (2021) analysed, NSFW content has multiplied in recent times and in addition to racist tweets, athletes must overcome these images and videos where their skin color and ethnicity is negatively portrayed. A concrete example of this is Real Madrid’s player Vinicius JR who not only has to constantly face racist chants in stadiums but also has images and videos posted on Twitter which heavily abuse his skin color. To add salt into injury, the advent of artificial intelligence has only made matters worse. Tanksley (2024) analysed that the advent of AI has made the manipulation of images and videos easier and this has impacted heavily on racism towards black athletes in football on Twitter. For example, recently fans have been making several deepfakes on black athletes through AI where their voice and figure are being recreated with tons of racist slurs included and posted as NSFW content. While Twitter doesn’t take down these posts, sometimes these contents fall into the memes section where there is a complete mixture of good and bad posts. Twitter allowing users to post NSFW content is just another way for fans to racially abuse black football athletes as they have the liberty of not only using long paragraphs filled with racist slurs but also create racist illustrations through images and videos which will last forever on the internet.
The use of fake identity to racially abuse individuals has been a recurring issue across all social media platforms over the years and Twitter certainly forms part of it. Similarly to other social media platforms, Twitter allows users to create profiles without truly verifying their true identity. As Alsubaei (2023) revealed, fake accounts are one of the most challenging issue the platform faces to this day and this has taken a heavy toll on racism towards black athletes in football. The above arguments on racist tweets and NSFW content on Twitter largely includes people who use fake accounts to racially abuse these players. Additionally, the use of a VPN also facilitates their task as they can tweet without revealing their real location. Back & Mills (2021) termed the use of fake identity on social media as a scapegoat to hurt other individuals. In the case of racism towards black athletes on Twitter, it has always been a constant issue since the creation of the platform. The ability to racially abuse these players from behind a screen without revealing their identity is all due to the platform not having strict policies to counter these fake profiles. Although after the events of the 2020 Euro final, most of these users were tracked down by the police, the main issue stills remain present. The ability to create a fake profile on Twitter without proper verification is still permissible which only increases the probability of racist slurs being directed at these players. A proper verification process is the least the platform can do as it will create a sense of honesty on the platform and will prevent users from abusing a player’s skin color all while hiding behind a screen.
Conclusion :
Twitter has undeniably cause severe harm to black athletes of our generation in the world of football. With the amount of racist slurs black football athletes face on Twitter everyday, one can argue that Twitter has become a substitute to football stadiums where fans unleash all their racist comments on the platform. Racism towards black football athletes on this platform represents a disturbing fact proliferating in the modern society. The fact that people are still lacking behind and judging the skin color of an individual shows the lack of knowledge present among a certain group of people. In this modern world where social media has taken over everything, platforms like Twitter is still being used to racially abuse an individual. Despite several ongoings fights to make racial equality flourish everywhere, social media platforms still lack behind in proving itself as a racial abuse free platform. Thus, it can be said we are still far from having platform like Twitter and every other social media platform completely free from racism and discrimination towards the black community in this sport.
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