by Stephen Chapman
Ahead of this weekend’s social media boycott, Manchester United, has revealed the scale of abuse directed at its players through the platforms.
The club said that there has been a 350% increase in abuse directed towards its players. The research showed:
86% of these posts were racist,
8% were homophobic or transphobic;
Activity peaked in January 2021 with over 400 abusive player posts recorded;
The vast majority of racist posts contained either the N word (and variants on the spelling) or emojis used with racist intent (monkey, chimp, banana, gorilla).
It also showed that there was also an increase of user-to-user abuse within the community, with a sharp rise over the summer of 2020. 43% of these posts were racist in nature, while 7% were homophobic or transphobic.