Everyone has an opinion on football. Fans can be incredibly passionate and tribal when it comes to supporting their beloved team. But, those opinions, and that passion, can often turn into anger, violence and hate. Through social media platforms, those reactionary outbursts or carefully crafted comments can be sent directly to players, managers, referees, commentators, pundits and sports journalists. In this Cultural Conversation, I will outline some of the headline findings from a three-year project called 'Tackling Online Hate in Football' (TOHIF). The TOHIF team gathered and analysed 50 million tweets relating to online hate in men's and women's football tournaments between 2008-22. We can chart the spikes, triggers and wider socio-political trends through this 14-year dataset. We also conducted interviews and focus groups with over 200 participants including players, managers and sports journalists. The presentation will highlight how online hate and abuse is experienced and what impact it has on the target. The presentation conclude by offering solutions around how to mitigate and challenge the threat of online hate, abuse and harms in football and beyond.
