Dr Daniel Kilvington

This paper explores sports journalists’ experiences of online harms in the UK and Ireland. Academic and wider media attention regarding online harms has tended to focus on spheres including sport, politics and music. However, the experience of journalists, and particularly sports journalists, has been overlooked within academia. Wolfe (2019) suggests that because the journalism industry is changing, journalists are now increasingly expected to have a visible online presence. Yet, as journalists move into the online public eye, they have become targets of harm. As Isbister et al (2018) states, public figures, including journalists, receive a disproportionately large volume of online abuse. The extent of this abuse is now starting to be understood as the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) reported that 51% of those surveyed had experienced online abuse within the previous year while 78% noted that abuse and harassment had become part of the job. Furthermore, around 80% of UK regional journalists believe that the problem has got ‘significantly worse’ since beginning their careers (Behind Local News 2020). Binns’ (2017) adds that 15 percent of UK journalists had ‘dropped stories’ that might have resulted in online abuse. Previous studies have attempted to quantify abuse, however, this paper uses qualitative approaches to critically explore and understand sports journalists lived experiences surrounding online harms. Specifically, we will examine the impact that online harms have on sports journalists both personally and professionally. In order to critically understand such experiences, we will draw on theory concerning emotional labour within the context of journalism studies. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with sports journalists, we will consider: triggers and types of online harms; how online harms affects mental health, working culture and practice; possible coping strategies to minimise its impact; institutional support, or lack of; and a series of recommendations aimed at supporting and protecting sports journalists. Our research attempts to create real and meaningful impact. We will therefore outline an array of non-academic outputs aimed at stakeholders and media outlets. These include educational resources designed to protect and support sports journalists from online harms, research informed policy recommendations, and a series of coping strategies that are informed by the datasets.

Sport, Media and Discrimination provides critical, inter-disciplinary and international perspectives on how sports media constructs and reinforces discrimination in contemporary societies. The book argues that the importance of sport within modern culture means sports media has a powerful role to play in circulating, and combatting, potentially harmful ideas. Furthermore, the recent explosion of online and social media-related discrimination makes the understanding and tackling of these problems a matter of social importance and urgency. Including theoretical and empirically-informed contributions from leading researchers from around the world, the book examines four core themes: diversity and the sports media; sports media representations and receptions; social media, sport and discrimination; and Esports and discrimination. Featuring fascinating contemporary cases including amateur footballers, ethnicity and sports media; gender imbalance in Australian sports media; the legal regulation of social media; and the digital representation of Black women footballers in the FIFA videogame, the book offers a clear sense of the key issues and questions in this field, while offering potential solutions and ways forward. This book is important reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, sports media and communication, gender studies, ‘race’ and racism, media studies, or the impact of technology on society.

Sport can be a great leveller, bringing people of different creeds, classes and cultures together over the love of a game or a club. It can also drive and keep people apart, creating perpetual winners and losers in the process. The media plays a big, and ever bigger, role in how these forces operate. Sport media is characterised by its massive popularity as well as by the diversity of bodies it represents based on, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, (dis)ability and social class. The combination of its mass appeal and its portrayal of diverse bodies makes sports media a powerful site for the (re)production of meaning-making of diversity in society (Van Sterkenburg, 2025). While some scholars have pointed out how this meaning-making process can sometimes lead to an appreciation of diversity and an increase in tolerance for people who are perceived as different from oneself, other scholars have shown how this is either conditional (Van Sterkenburg, Peeters & Van Amsterdam, 2019) or can result in social divides and exclusions (Bradbury and Conricode, 2025; Kavanagh et al., 2019; Kilvington, 2016; Kilvington et al., 2024) based on implicit and explicit mechanisms of discrimination. Trying to understand how all this works, why it matters, and how it could be improved, is in essence what this book is about.

This chapter will critically investigate the worrying trend of online harms encountered by contemporary sports journalists in the United Kingdom. Rather than using abuse, hate or violence, this work utilises harms which allows us to take a broader approach to how the internet impacts upon sports journalists’ practices and behaviours both in personal and professional ways. It draws on previous literature which illustrates that women journalists in particular face a disproportionate amount of online harms which includes abuse, but also harassment and sexual advances. It considers a range of triggers that exacerbate online harms such as the type of news story in question or the time in which the story is released. The chapter will explore and critique a range of practices and policies enforced by sports media organisations designed to effectively support and protect the workforce against online harms. It will conclude by offering a series of recommendations aimed at sports media organisations to most effectively safeguard sports journalists from current and future online harms.

Sport can be a great leveller, bringing people of different creeds, classes and cultures together over the love of a game or a club. It can also drive and keep people apart, creating perpetual winners and losers in the process. The media plays a big, and ever bigger, role in how these forces operate. Sport media is characterised by its massive popularity as well as by the diversity of bodies it represents based on, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, (dis)ability and social class. The combination of its mass appeal and its portrayal of diverse bodies makes sports media a powerful site for the (re)production of meaning-making of diversity in society (Van Sterkenburg, 2025). While some scholars have pointed out how this meaning-making process can sometimes lead to an appreciation of diversity and an increase in tolerance for people who are perceived as different from oneself, other scholars have shown how this is either conditional (Van Sterkenburg, Peeters & Van Amsterdam, 2019) or can result in social divides and exclusions (Bradbury and Conricode, 2025; Kavanagh et al., 2019; Kilvington, 2016; Kilvington et al., 2024) based on implicit and explicit mechanisms of discrimination. Trying to understand how all this works, why it matters, and how it could be improved, is in essence what this book is about.

Only ten British Asian professional footballers are competing in England out of approximately 4000 despite there being a population of 3.6 million in England and Wales. Just six British Asian footballers between the ages of 16 to 18 years old were attached to the 72 Football League academies in 2009 out of over 1300 players. There is only one British Asian coach out of the 522 senior football coaches in England. These figures speak volumes and are the reason why academics, campaign groups and key stakeholders have investigated, and attempted to combat, the British Asian football exclusion. This work will offer a detailed academic review of over 20 years of research in this field before adding new empirical data. It critically analyses several reform strategies that have been created by key stakeholders. Finally, I will present various recommendations for reform which are borne out of a decade of primary research.

Institutional racism can be present and perpetuated through the policies, procedures, cultures, and norms of institutions. This paper examines the issue of institutional racism in relation to the sports media, with particular focus on the written press in the UK. It identifies three key areas in which elements of institutional racism are to be found. First, it argues that regulatory practices, in the form of the Press Complaints Commission, have downplayed and ignored problems of discriminatory content in the media; second, that recruitment practices have led to a chronic lack of diversity within the sports journalism profession; and third, that damaging racial stereotypes persist in sports coverage. The paper draws on extensive empirical work conducted for the authors' recently published "Race, Racism and Sports Journalism" (published by Routledge, 2012). This combines analysis of media texts and interviews with athletes, journalists and campaigners. It concludes by offering recommendations for how the problem of institutional racism could be tackled through the training and education of sports journalists.

Although overt expressions of racism are increasingly rare within the sport media, implicit and conscious/unconscious racial bias, on the other hand, is a common feature within contemporary sports reporting. A comprehensive body of research has illustrated that Black athletes are more likely to be praised for their supposed innate biological superiority while White athletes are more likely to be credited for their work ethic and intelligence. In addition, Black, Asian and minoritized ethnic athletes, such as Lewis Hamilton and Raheem Sterling, have often been criticized for being too ‘flashy’ by some sections of the UK press, which conjures up images of undeserved riches. These representations are symptomatic of a wider culture in which minoritized communities are ‘othered’. This article, then, focuses on one example of racial bias from BBC Radio Derby’s Sports Scene podcast from February 2020. Former professional footballer turned pundit, Craig Ramage, suggested that ‘all the young Black lads’ needed ‘pulling down a peg or two’ and needed to work harder. This work empirically investigated three online post titles across Facebook, Instagram and a forum to critically examine how contemporary football audiences reacted to such comments. The analysis illustrated that online participants were: (1) divided over whether Ramage’s comments were racist or not, (2) unsure of who was to blame, (3) unsure of who the victim was. The article concludes by outlining preventative measures to avoid such reoccurrences and emphasizes the importance of educational training around equality and diversity within the sport media.

For a while, those responsible for running football seemed confident that racism had been successfully tackled. Racism-related arrests at football matches were thought to be at a record low, while the atmosphere at matches was said to have been transformed from the 1970s and 1980s when overt racist abuse was commonplace (Culture, Media, and Sport Committee, 2012). But the advent and rise of social media has given racism a new, public platform and exposed as myth the view that racism has been eradicated from the sporting arena. A recent international study of hate speech concluded that social media had led to “an explosion of online bullying and hate” (ICCA, 2013: 7). Another estimated that around 10, 000 racist slurs were being published each day on Twitter (Bartlett et al., 2014). Kick It Out, football’s main anti-racism and anti-discrimination organization in the UK, observed a rapid rise in the number of reports of racism it received relating to social media. This chapter critically discusses the above findings and analyzes current responses of authorities to the problem of football-related online hate speech, including those by football organizations, anti-discrimination groups, the police and legal system, and social media platforms. The chapter approaches the topic through the lens of the online disinhibition effect (Suler, 2004), which views online behaviour as having particular, psychological characteristics that tend to encourage expressions of hate and prejudice.

At the beginning of the 2018-19 season, there were a total of eight black managers in English professional football out of the 92 clubs. The League Managers Association (2015) stated that there have been 51 black managerial appointments in English football since Tony Collins secured the Rochdale Football Club post in 1960. However, no British Asian has ever managed a professional English club. And, while there are 20 black senior football coaches out of 482, there are only two British Asian senior coaches (Bradbury, 2017a). While a plethora of studies have investigated the exclusion of British Asian male football players (Bains and Patel, 1996; Burdsey, 2004a; 2004b; 2007; Kilvington, 2012; 2013; 2016; 2017), the exclusion of British Asian football coaches has been largely ignored. Considering the recent implementation of a version of the Rooney Rule by the English Football League and Football Association (FA) at national level (Kilvington, 2018; Lusted, 2017), this chapter offers a timely examination into the barriers that British Asian football coaches and managers encounter. The chapter will offer insights from British Asian football coaches, across all levels of the game. The utilised methods include semi-structured interviews, while Critical Race Theory will be utilised to methodologically and theoretically inform the discussion. This chapter therefore provides a platform whereby British Asian football coaches can offer personal stories. This is significant as over time, strong and persuasive arguments for change can emerge out of the weight of evidence from mutual counter narratives. This research hopes to provide a critical understanding of the barriers British Asian coaches encounter while also offering recommendations for reform, which have been built from the experiences of the participants themselves.

Although English football has, to some extent, managed the problem of racism in and around football matches, recent years have seen an increase in football-related racist content published on social media. Footballers are frequently the target or subject of such abuse and occasionally the source of it. In this context, this article explores and critically assesses the response of English football’s institutions, organisations, and clubs to the problem of racism on social media. Its findings are based on interviews with key officials from the Professional Footballers’ Association and Kick It Out and with safeguarding and media officers from football clubs across the English Premier League and English Football League. It concludes there are a number of systematic failings undermining or hindering football’s attempts to address this issue including poor coordination, a lack of clear guidelines, ad hoc educational provision, a shortage of resources, and a culture of secrecy at many clubs. This article concludes with some recommendations about how these weaknesses may start to be improved.

Covering both qualitative and quantitative methods, the book introduces key topics such as generating a research idea, implementing the research design, maintaining good ethical standards, and collecting, analysing and presenting data.

Cyber hate is increasing. Every 30 seconds, a woman, somewhere, receives an abusive comment on Twitter (Amnesty International). And, it is estimated that around 20% of college students in the United States have been cyber-bullied. This article explores the motivational factors encouraging online hate and abuse. It will draw on Goffman’s seminal work, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, to critically understand online communication, interaction and behaviour. It will define virtual frontstages and virtual backstages. By critically understanding the different characteristics of online and offline communication, it will help us comprehend how Goffman’s dramaturgical model is compromised when applied to online communication. Therefore, the work attempts to update this model, illustrating that virtual stages have blurred which affects behaviours, and exacerbates performances of hate online. As a result, many online platforms have become Virtual Stages of Hate.

This article examines the Rooney Rule and offers the thoughts of British Asian football coaches working in English football in response to this policy implementation. The Rooney Rule, first piloted by English Football League (EFL) clubs during the 2016-17 season, makes it compulsory for all 72 EFL clubs to interview at least one black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) candidate (if an application has been received) for all managerial and first-team coaching roles. And, on 9 January 2018, the Football Association (FA) revealed that they had also adopted the Rooney Rule for all coaching jobs relating to the England national team. Because English football harbours so few BAME coaches, calls for the Rooney Rule to be introduced in English football had started to increase in volume, and led to its trial inception. But, is this policy welcomed or opposed among British Asian coaches? What fundamental barriers does this policy overlook? Is English football ready for the Rooney Rule? And, do British Asian coaches, a group believed to benefit from this positive action policy, deem that this rule is the answer to help facilitate positive change? With the aid of empirical research, this article critically examines and assesses the potential impact of the Rooney Rule and recommends additional inclusionary practices.

This chapter explores some of the key considerations when coaching participants from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Sport is ideologically loaded with the notion of meritocracy. The emphasis on hard work, talent, and a ‘never give up attitude’ provides a convenient framework to help explain successes and failures – both on and off the playing field. One way to consider the ongoing influence of ideas of ‘race’ in sport coaching contexts is through the concept of whiteness, which has become an increasingly prominent area of analysis in sport research. The dominant position of whiteness can be seen in many sports across the world. In English football, for example, spaces of governance, management, and off-field roles are almost entirely populated by white people. Meso-level factors of sport – related to organisational structures, practices and networks – are also useful to comprehend the importance and power of whiteness.

Purpose This work critically investigates online fan responses towards the implementation of the affirmative action policy, the Rooney Rule, within English professional football. It explores systemic and structural racism and the history of the Rooney Rule, before analysing football fans' Twitter comments concerning the policy within English football across an 18-month period. Design/methodology/approach This research utilised a bespoke search programme to identify and analyse Tweets which focused on the Rooney Rule in English football. A total of 205 posts were thematically analysed and a series of codes were created. Findings The findings illustrated that fans were generally divided over the Rooney Rule. Over half of the participants welcomed counter measures against structural racism although many caveated responses by critiquing the Rule's approach and scope. For others, however, the policy is yet another example of ‘reverse racism’ and ‘political correctness gone mad’. The findings illustrate that there is an undercurrent of hostility towards anti-racist action and a belief that sport is inherently meritocratic and fair. Originality/value While much research has focused on examining online reactions to ‘trigger events’, this chapter provides an empirical insight into contemporary football fan responses towards anti-racist action in the ‘beautiful game’. It demonstrates that there are a series of common misconceptions and misunderstandings towards affirmative action policies in sport. Once we become aware of such misunderstandings, we can attempt to remedy them in order to aid the efficacy of anti-racist action.

While online abuse toward athletes and sports stars has received much attention from scholars and the media, the phenomenon of online abuse towards sports journalists has remained under the radar. This chapter therefore critically explores online abuse directed at sports media professionals. It begins by outlining a theoretical framework for understanding online abuse. It then discusses previous research about online abuse of journalists before focusing on what we know about abuse directed specifically at journalists in a sporting context. The chapter then outlines recent findings from interviews with a range of sports media professionals to help understand the impact of this abuse on them and their work. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations for how sports journalists can best deal with online abuse, as well as ideas for future research on this subject.

Racist abuse may at one time have been hurled across the sports stadium or scrawled on a wall. But in today's social media world it can be published to millions, from almost anywhere, in an instant. Sport, Racism and Social Media provides the first significant, academic account of how social media is shaping the nature of racisms in sport. Among the questions it addresses are: How, and why, is racism being expressed across different social media platforms and sporting contexts? To what extent is social media providing new platforms for traditional prejudices or actually creating new forms of racism? How can campaigners, authorities and individuals best challenge and counter these forms of racism? Combining analysis of social media content with in-depth interviews with athletes, fans, campaigners and officials, and including extensive case studies of soccer, boxing, the NHL, the NBA, and cricket, the book provides important new insights on a familiar but ever changing story. It is essential reading for any student, researcher, media professional, administrator or policy-maker with an interest in sport, new media or the issue of racism in wider society.

Racism within professional English football is said to have diminished in recent years as football has evolved since the days of the 1970s when monkey chants, thus overt racism, were commonly witnessed in the stands. However, although overt racism within the game has perhaps reduced, other forms of racism still exist and may have contributed to the lack of professional British-Asian football players. This essay will (a) explore notions of nationalism and racisms within Britain; (b) examine racism within contemporary domestic football; and (c) present interview material with half of the professional British-Asian demographic in England to gauge an insight into what barriers they may have faced, whether racism is still a prominent threat and reasons behind the poor participation levels. By focusing on these areas in detail, the essay intends to explore the British-Asian demographic and makes an attempt to theorize the future of British-Asians within professional English football. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Despite campaigns to educate and increase awareness, discrimination continues to be a deep-rooted problem in sport. This book provides an international, interdisciplinary and critical discussion of various forms of discrimination in sport today, with contributions from world-leading academics and high-profile campaigners. Divided into five sections, the book explores racism, sexism, homophobia, disability, and the role of media in both perpetuating and tackling discrimination across a variety of sports and sporting events around the world. Drawing on examples from football, rugby, cricket, tennis, climbing, the Olympics and the Paralympics, it offers a critical review of current debates and discusses the latest empirical research on the changing nature of discrimination in sport. Taking into account the experiences of athletes and coaches across all performance levels, it presents recommendations for further action and directions for future research. A timely and challenging study, Sport and Discrimination is essential reading for all students and scholars of sports studies with an interest in the sociology of sport and the relationship between sport, society and the media.

This article examines the exclusion of British Asians from English professional football. At present, there are eight British Asians with professional contracts out of over 4,000 players. This statistic is increasingly noteworthy when we consider that, first, football is extremely popular across British Asian groups and, second, Britain is home to over 4 million British Asians (the UK’s largest minority ethnic group). Following a brief introduction as well as a discussion of racisms, the work will provide an overview of the barriers that have excluded British Asian football communities from the professional ranks. In particular, I shall discuss some of the key obstacles including overt racism, ‘all-Asian’ football structures and cultural differences. However, the focus of this paper is to explore the impact and persist-ing nature of institutional racism within football. With the aid of oral testimonies, this work shall present British Asian experiences of covert racism in the game. I shall therefore demonstrate that coaches/scouts (as gatekeepers) have a tendency to stereotype and racialize British Asian footballers, thus exacerbating the British Asian football exclusion. Finally, the article will offer policy recommendations for reform. These recommendations, which have come out of primary and secondary research, aspire to challenge institutional racism and combat inequalities within the game.

• cricket in the UK, Australian and Asian media, with particular focus on PakistanBeginning with a theoretical discussion of race, sport and media, this book critically examines issues of race, racism and sports journalism and offers practical advice on sports reporting, including a discussion of guidelines for ethical journalism. in a series of case studies, representations of race will be explored through historical and contemporary analysis of international media coverage, including online and digital platforms. The background and impacts of these representations will also be discussed through interviews with athletes and sports journalists.Subjects covered include:• athletics and media representations of athletes, including a study of the reporting of South African runner Caster Semenya• football and the under-representation of British-Asians, with an analysis of how race is constructed in the digital arena• boxing with particular reference to Muhammad Ali, America and Islam• Formula One and analysis of the media reporting, international spectator response and racism towards Lewis Hamilton, described in the media as the first black driver.Finally, the book will analyse the make-up of sports journalism, examining the causes and consequences of a lack of diversity within the profession.

This book examines the exclusion of British Asians from the football industry, drawing on a wealth of empirical work with players, coaches, scouts, managers, fans, anti-racist organisations, community officers, and key stakeholders.

This introduction outlines some of the core themes and concepts that cut across this special issue. We begin by discussing the Olympics and Paralympics and how athlete activists have used the Games to highlight inequity and social injustice. With television audiences surpassing five billion people, these megaevents have the potential to not only reach onlookers from across the world but perhaps change attitudes, practices, and policies. Despite IOC-imposed restrictions around athlete activism, we offer an array of campaigns and activist organizations in the French context to illustrate how discriminations are being challenged in advance of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. At the 2024 Games, it is highly likely that issues of discrimination will be highlighted, and athletes are central to this discussion. Therefore, across this special issue, we focus on representations of gender and ethnicity in television, radio, and newspaper coverage; social media abuse directed at athletes; and disability inclusivity at the Games. Using an intersectional approach where possible, we illustrate how this myriad of identities shapes experiences and the mediated representations of individuals, groups, and nations. Every article within the special issue offers recommendations for positive and transformative change, or possible areas for future research. We end this introduction by presenting some of these core recommendations designed to challenge inequalities.

In order to understand discrimination, a term which encompasses a variety of forms, we must first define it. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (online), discrimination occurs when one treats ‘a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way… because of their skin colour, sex, sexuality, etc’. In other words, discrimination takes place when an individual or group encounters differential treatment as a result of one or more of their identity markers. These identity markers, which are usually externally visible, include age, class, colour, disability, height, language, physical attractiveness, ‘race’/ethnicity, religion, sex/gender, sexuality, weight/size, etc. Although our uniqueness should be celebrated, instead, these differences among human groups have led to specific forms of discrimination, e.g. anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, etc. In order to protect individuals and groups from discrimination, nations have imposed laws to ensure equality, e.g. Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act (1975), Germany’s General Equal Treatment Act (2006), the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act (2005), the US’s Civil Rights Act (1991), etc. However, despite legislation, prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory practices still exist and affect individuals and groups on a daily basis. Discrimination is manifest within education, employment, housing, the legal system - and sport is no exception. Discrimination, then, is deep-rooted and it operates in various ways.

This paper explores an incident of alleged fan racism involving Chelsea defender, Antonio Rüdiger. During a match against Tottenham Hotspur, in December 2019, Rüdiger claimed he heard racial abuse from Spurs fans. This incident sparked a broader national conversation regarding racism in sport, and wider society. This paper will draw on a comprehensive content analysis of Twitter comments to provide insights into fan reactions at the time of the incident. Was Rüdiger alleged to have played the ‘race card’? Was Rüdiger believed to have used his ‘race’ to attempt to punish the Spurs’ fans? Using thematic analysis, it will highlight patterns in fan responses to this case and attempt to illustrate football fans’ attitudes towards ‘race’ and racism within English football. The paper will close by offering some final thoughts on how racism, and other forms of discrimination, can be both challenged inside the stadium and on social media.

Sports harbors a long, unsettling, and troubling history with discrimination. Sports and discrimination are intertwined, despite perceptions of sports being inherently meritocratic. Often, we hear that athlete success is based on talent, hard work, and dedication. Those who ‘make it’ are there because they deserve it; those who do not, however, are perceived responsible for their own failures. This is a worrying position and one that subscribes to living in a post-racial or post-sexist world. Sport is no different or special – the systemic obstacles that exist in wider society, found in housing, education, healthcare, and the media, are equally rooted in the global sporting infrastructure. Therefore, it is crucial that we not only attempt to critically understand discrimination in sports but also consider and present ways to challenge it. This new Sport and Discrimination section is perfectly poised to provide a platform whereby world-leading research can be gathered, a network can blossom, and recommendations or attempts to challenge inequity and injustice in the context of sports can be highlighted and promoted.

Sports such as football are well-recognised sites for anti-racist politics. Yet, there is a lack of scrutiny and research around the racialised power dynamics between coach/teacher and athlete/student. This article presents an empirically and theoretically informed anti-racist coaching (ARC) model of practice. It was constructed using data collected from 35 semi-structured interviews with football coaches and exploratory peer-to-peer interviews with boys from professional English football academies. The ARC model is also framed by asset-based theories of anti-racist pedagogy. The model consists of six core principles: (1) Be culturally self-aware and self-reflective; (2) Be an ARC “influencer”/ally; (3) Develop anti-racist consciousness among players; (4) Build culturally competent relationships; (5) Adapt practice to meet cultural needs; (6) Create and sustain an ARC environment. After discussing the data that informed these principles, the article concludes by outlining how to embed the ARC model within football and other sport settings.

Exploring how online hate speech infiltrates public discourse, this article examines the antisemitic hashtag, ‘#JewGoal’, tracing its spread from the FIFA gaming community to online football discussions. Analysing 1364 public tweets on the platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), the article illustrates how the hashtag, framed as humour and sports commentary, perpetuated antisemitic stereotypes through historical tropes and cultural symbols. Utilizing the Lacanian concepts of jouissance and llanguage , the study reveals how #JewGoal extended beyond mere humour, exposing an excessive enjoyment tied to its repetitive and absurd use. This dual function – offering inclusion in online communities while perpetuating harm – underscores how normalized antisemitic language infiltrates sports fandom. By framing #JewGoal as a llanguage of hate, its impact lies not in explicit content but in its provocative repetition. By detailing the persistence of antisemitism in digital spaces, the article emphasizes the need to critically address the enjoyment derived from harmful online speech.

In Bristol only 6% of teachers are from the global majority when almost 1 in 5 people and 38% of its student population are from global majority backgrounds (Census 2021; Bristol City Council, 2022b; DfE 2023c). With even fewer people represented in school leadership, this thesis explores the role ‘race’ and whiteness play and examines the impact of whiteness on policy interpretation and enactment. Workforce data, interviews and archival material are thematically linked to interrogate relationships between whiteness, White people and policy interpretation presenting a study to understand better how whiteness is shaped by and in relation to the majoritised White leadership of Bristol’s schools. Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) are used as theoretical lenses and, specifically, the tools of whiteness and emotionality are used to interrogate how whiteness influences school contexts through its leadership (Picower, 2009; Ahmed, 2014; Matias and Zembylas, 2014). Data from interviews with 31 school leaders are analysed alongside archival material and workforce data to examine wider influences of whiteness in policy interpretation and enactment. Findings suggests educational leadership in Bristol is shaped by legacies of colour evasion influenced by combinations of racism (re)assembled through whiteness as philanthropy and neo-liberal policy that decontextualises schools from the communities they serve. The thesis explores how whiteness maintains majoritised White leadership teams providing deeper and more meaningful ownership and responsibility for White supremacy, as primarily generated from policy and group orientations of White people. It makes a unique contribution to the importance of understanding racism in context and how Bristol’s past conditions the present day. It amplifies Bristol’s social and cultural history using the interest convergence and counter testimonies and offers a critically reflexive approach from a former insider.

Men’s professional football has historically dominated the sport media landscape. However, the increased professionalization of women’s football, and the growth in popularity of the Women’s Super League (WSL), the European Championships and World Cup, means that female players are now competing in front of sold-out capacity crowds with millions of viewers watching via television and streaming platforms. With this enhanced popularity, it has increased online traffic relating to, and discussing, women’s football. Some of these discussions are abusive, and potentially harmful. Nonetheless, while a growing body of research has attempted to investigate online harms in football, most of the attention has been directed at men’s football. This article therefore importantly focuses on women’s football. In this work, we will examine qualitative findings with 30 current and former professional women’s players to critically understand how online sexism, misogyny and wider harms, are experienced and dealt with. Our findings demonstrate that players are vulnerable to online harms and often try to dismiss it as an occupational hazard. We suggest that stakeholders, such as professional clubs should devote more time, energy and resources to better protect and support players against such harms. The article concludes by offering some recommendations for reform and suggestions for future research.

The rise of online hate speech in sport is a growing concern, with fans, players and officials subject to racist, sexist and homophobic abuse (in addition to many other prejudices) via social media platforms. While hate speech and discrimination have always been problems in sport, the growth of social media has seen them exacerbated exponentially. As a consequence, policy makers, sport governing bodies and grassroots anti-hate organisations are largely left playing catch-up with the rapidly shifting realm of online hate. Scholars have attempted to fill this vacuum with research into this topic, but such is the evolving nature of the issue that research has been diverse and fragmentary. We offer a scoping review into the scholarship of online hate in sport in order to encourage and facilitate further research into this urgent issue. Our review will achieve this through offering a comprehensive cataloguing of previously employed methodologies, case studies and conclusions. In doing so, it will not only equip future researchers with a concise overview of existing research in the field, but also illuminate areas and approaches in need of further examination.

A special issue

The victory of the Spanish national women’s football team at the 2023 FIFA World Cup was marred by the mass-mediated non-consensual kiss on midfielder, Jennifer Hermoso, by Luis Rubiales, then President of the Royal Spanish Football National Federation. The kiss sparked general outrage worldwide and led to the prosecution of Rubiales for sexual assault and coercion. Drawing on the concepts of “moral shock” and “social drama”, this article explores how this widely disseminated episode of “subjective violence” resulted in a shock capable of mobilising and politicising different agents. It does so through qualitative analysis of official statements and vernacular online discussions. The article makes the case that the unfolding of this social drama enabled more subtle (objective) violence, long endured by female athletes, to be brought into public discourse debate. In so doing, it boosted demands for social change. But such demands were also contested, in that the structured social drama resulted in an online “reactionary moral shock” characterised by anti-feminist and misogynistic discourses. Significantly, our analysis of these discourses reveals a shift in male victimisation narratives and strategies to disempower women and maintain sexual inequality. These include the denial of gender-based violence and the banalisation of sexual abuse.

Homophobic speech is a form of hate speech. Social media enables hate speech to spread rapidly and widely through the internet, and unlike offline hate speech, can persist indefinitely, thereby prolonging its impact. Due to the adverse impact of hate speech, policymakers have called for greater action from online platforms to moderate and remove hate speech, including homophobic content. While homophobic hate speech is prevalent in online soccer discourses, there are few studies on this empirical context in general and specifically on the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) for detecting such speech. This study addresses this gap by proposing a homophobic speech text classification pipeline. We introduce H-DICT, a new general dictionary for identifying potential homophobic content in documents, and leverage this dictionary to curate and manually label an annotated dataset of homophobic and non-homophobic samples from the UEFA European Football Championships (the Euros) discourse on Twitter. We fine-tune and evaluate five large language models (LLMs) based on the BERT architecture - BERT, DistilBERT, RoBERTa, BERT Hate, and RoBERTa Offensive - and use Integrated Gradients, an explainable AI technique to explain each model’s predictions. RoBERTa Offensive, an LLM fine-tuned specifically for detecting offensive language, presented the best performance when compared to the other LLMs.

The term sportswashing has been discussed and analysed within academic circles, as well as the mainstream media. However, the majority of existing research has focused on one-off event-based sportswashing strategies (such as autocratic states hosting major international sports events) rather than longer term investment-based strategies (such as state actors purchasing sports clubs and teams). Furthermore, little has been written about the impact of this latter strategy on the existing fanbase of the purchased team and on their relationship with sportswashing and the discourses surrounding it. This paper addresses this lacuna through analysis of a popular Manchester City online fan forum, which illustrates the manner in which this community of dedicated City fans have legitimated the actions of the club's ownership regime, the Abu Dhabi United Group – a private equity group operated by Abu Dhabi royalty and UAE politicians. The discursive strategies of the City fans are discussed, in addition to the wider significance of these strategies on the issue of sportswashing and its coverage by the media.

This article generates new insights into the changing profession of journalism. Empirically, we present the findings of 21 interviews with journalists working in the Irish and UK sports beats on their experiences of online abuse. Conceptually, we address the under-theorising of emotions in journalism by extending the utility and entanglement of emotion work and emotional labour. In doing so, we posit future lines of theoretical enquiry about individual and social regulation. Several key discoveries are presented. First, sports journalism is a distinctive profession because significant authentic emotional work is undertaken. This is only accentuated when online abuse occurs. Journalists are deeply affected by this abuse, personally and professionally. Second, online abuse towards sports journalists is now so ubiquitous as to be habitually accepted, and it has obscured the distinction between public and private spaces. Third, in response, sports journalists have been compelled to develop their own emotional strategies, including self-censorship, to cope with and manage online abuse. The findings presented here also pose practical and existential questions about the sustainability of the profession, especially in the absence of formal institutional supports or even an informal code of practice about how to cope with and respond to online abuse.

In the dynamic space of Twitter, now called X, interpersonal racism surfaces when individuals from dominant racial groups engage in behaviours that diminish and harm individuals from other racial groups. It can be manifested in various forms, including pejorative name-calling, racial slurs, stereotyping, and microaggressions. The consequences of racist speech on social media are profound, perpetuating social division, reinforcing systemic inequalities, and undermining community cohesion. In the specific context of football discourse, instances of racism and hate crimes are well-documented. Regrettably, this issue has seamlessly migrated to the football discourse on social media platforms, especially Twitter. The debate on Internet freedom and social media moderation intensifies, balancing the right to freedom of expression against the imperative to protect individuals and groups from harm. In this paper, we address the challenge of detecting racism on Twitter in the context of football by using Large Language Models (LLMs). We fine-tuned different BERT-based model architectures to classify racist content in the Twitter discourse surrounding the UEFA European Football Championships. The study aims to contribute insights into the nuanced language of hate speech in soccer discussions on Twitter while underscoring the necessity for context-sensitive model training and evaluation. Additionally, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques, specifically the Integrated Gradient method, are used to enhance transparency and interpretability in the decision-making processes of the LLMs, offering a comprehensive approach to mitigating racism and offensive language in online sports discourses.

Exploring online criticisms of the “take the knee” protest during “Euro 2020”, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both “wokeism” and the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-white criticisms of the “take the knee” protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, “woke agenda” in the tournament’s organisation and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between sport and online hate, via a case study of the work of Tackling Online Hate in Football (TOHIF). In elucidating the challenge of online hate in sport, the chapter showcases how TOHIF is responding to online hate through a range of timely and innovative methodologies and interventions, including accessing large-scale longitudinal empirical datasets, developing tools and techniques to identify and classify online abuse, undertaking over 120 interviews and focus groups with professional male and female footballers from across the UK, a major survey of football fans, interviews with player care professionals, and interviews and educational workshops with sport journalists. The chapter advocates that scholarly research must play a leading role in combatting online hate; initially by deepening the understanding of it, and additionally through shaping the public discourse and education on how to respond to it. We finish this chapter by advocating for some blue sky thinking, and identifying some core areas for future investment.

Although racism in football stadiums has generally decreased over the last two decades, social media has provided a platform for individual fans and the far Right to racially abuse players, clubs and fans in relative safety. In 2022, The Alan Turing Institute released a report which tracked abuse on Twitter towards Premier League players across the 2021/22 season. Their machine learning tool found that there were 59,871 abusive tweets directed at Premier League footballers, with 68 per cent of players receiving abuse at least once. So, what is English football doing to challenge this and protect its players? This chapter begins by showcasing the findings from Kearns et al’s (2022) scoping review of sport, social media and hate, completed as part of a research project entitled Tackling Online Hate in Football. The review found that a total of 41 peer-reviewed articles were published in this field since 2005, with football receiving the most attention. The scoping review found that Twitter was the platform most examined, and racism was the most researched issue. Building on this, the chapter first contextualizes the existing research, including a focus on football-related online racism and a theorization of factors underpinning online racism. This provides a suitable backdrop for the next part of the chapter, where we critically analyse several campaigns and strategies used by key stakeholders to curb online racism and wider forms of discrimination in football. In our final summary, we put forward some ideas and countermeasures to challenge online racism in football.

Drawing on theories of aversive racism and colour-blindness, which stress the invisibility of contemporary racism, this article analyses online discussions on taking the knee (TTK) during EURO2020 men’s football tournament. While highly visible racist abuse directed at Black English players after losing the final to Italy (dominative racism) received most public attention and repudiation, based on 6,850 English language tweets published on Twitter/X, this article shows how subtle racism and colour-blindness were reinforced in discussions around TTK over the duration of the tournament (aversive racism). The article also shows how individuals online developed a variety of strategies (evidence, othering, critique, and activism) to challenge the main arguments against anti-racist activism in football (identified in four themes: BLM, Marxism, virtue signalling, and woke). The article makes an original contribution by examining the changing intensity of online conversations on TTK over the duration of the tournament. Our analysis identifies key moments in the tournament, political elites’ rhetoric, and trends of success and failure as relevant factors that shaped vernacular conversations online. The discussion ultimately argues that investigating the temporal patterns of public discussions on (anti)racism provides valuable insights to understand the contemporary complexity of racism in football and society more broadly.

The term sportswashing has been discussed and analysed within academic circles, as well as the mainstream media. However, the majority of existing research has focused on one-off event-based sportswashing strategies (such as autocratic states hosting major international sports events) rather than longer term investment-based strategies (such as state actors purchasing sports clubs and teams). Furthermore, little has been written about the impact of this latter strategy on the existing fanbase of the purchased team and on their relationship with sportswashing and the discourses surrounding it. This paper addresses this lacuna through analysis of a popular Manchester City online fan forum, which illustrates the manner in which this community of dedicated City fans have legitimated the actions of the club's ownership regime, the Abu Dhabi United Group – a private equity group operated by Abu Dhabi royalty and UAE politicians. The discursive strategies of the City fans are discussed, in addition to the wider significance of these strategies on the issue of sportswashing and its coverage by the media.

Rationale This paper aims to critically explore the lived experiences of British South Asian people working in managerial and governance positions in English football; critique cultures of Whiteness in football; consider ways to resist/challenge racism in football; and offer data-informed recommendations to help increase British South Asian representation in leadership positions across football. Methodology This research draws on the testimonies of 21 British South Asian leaders working in English football (5 women and 16 men). Findings Participants used racialised performances to “fit in”; commonly encountered racist “banter”, microaggressions and microinsults; and routinely experienced examples of implicit and explicit “othering”. Practical Implications Stakeholders and policy makers must commit to the (1) development of inclusive and diverse recruitment strategies; (2) supporting minoritised ethnic staff members through programmes such as mentoring schemes; (3) implementation of mandatory race equity education for the workforce. Research Contribution While British South Asian experiences as players, and to some extent coaches, have been captured, the experiences of British South Asians in managerial and governance positions have been overlooked. This article treads new ground by highlighting experiences in off-field roles, thus adding to the wider body of work. Originality This work has used new and original data to cultivate a series of measures designed to boost the recruitment, retention and progression of British South Asian people working in English football.

This article problematises the usage of the term ‘BAME’ (Black Asian and Minority Ethnic) and considers its limitations as a diversity intervention. It draws on sociolinguistics, critical race theories and poststructuralism and is based on interviews with 21 British South Asian people working at senior and executive levels of the professional football industry in England and Scotland. Our analysis delineates formal and informal modes of racialisation, extending theories of racialisation beyond the creation of legal categories, to consider the discursive construction of ‘race’ and its institutionalising effects. At the same time, we show that it is important for sporting institutions to recognise and celebrate British South Asian representation, wherever and however it exists. The article calls for a greater focus on the sociolinguistic dimensions of racialised terminologies and their (in)ability to capture racialised difference; secondly, through invoking anti-essentialism and differential racialisation as heuristic tools it explores how racialised language reflects and sustains racialised hierarchies; and thirdly, it advocates for a deconstruction of the term ‘British South Asian’ to encourage a more nuanced approach to policy development aimed at realising better diversity outcomes.

Greg Clarke, former Chairman of the English Football Association, made several racist remarks during a 2020 appearance before a UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, claiming British South Asian people prefer to pursue careers in computing rather than football. Clarke’s ill-founded beliefs were poignantly well-timed given they came just as we were beginning our fieldwork, which involved interviewing 21 British South Asian senior leaders and executives across the football industry. Clarke’s comments crystallised what emerged from our interviews about battles to overcome institutional racisms and biases of co-workers. Drawing on over 36 hours of testimony – working at the nexus of economic sociology, critical race theory and the field of sport business management – we identify factors that regulate the openness/closedness of senior leadership and executive levels of employment in football, namely the role of exclusivity, closed networks, White allies, racial framing and exploitative temporality of non-executive boards.

This chapter explores some of the key considerations when coaching participants from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Sport is ideologically loaded with the notion of meritocracy. The emphasis on hard work, talent, and a ʼnever give up attitude’ provides a convenient framework to help explain successes and failures - both on and off the playing field. One way to consider the ongoing influence of ideas of ‘race’ in sport coaching contexts is through the concept of whiteness, which has become an increasingly prominent area of analysis in sport research. The dominant position of whiteness can be seen in many sports across the world. In English football, for example, spaces of governance, management, and off-field roles are almost entirely populated by white people. Meso-level factors of sport - related to organisational structures, practices and networks - are also useful to comprehend the importance and power of whiteness.

The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides a comprehensive exploration of how different media have evolved within social, regional and national contexts. The 50 chapters in this volume, written by an outstanding team of internationally respected scholars, bring together current debates and issues within media history in this era of rapid change, and also provide students and researchers with an essential collection of comparable media histories. The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field. Chapter 40 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315756202.ch40

Though still of concern, racist abuse within the UK’s football (soccer) stadiums has declined. However, with the increasing significance of digital leisure in people’s lives, there is now a large amount of abuse related to football that is expressed through social media. Digital communities provide both the means of consuming leisure (watching football) and ‘talking’ about it with whoever will ‘listen’. Here we examine the social architecture of networks on Twitter as they emerged in response to two incidents in 2020. To do this, we adopt Social Network Analysis to reveal the prosumption networks that form around key ‘users’. Our article offers empirical insights into racial digital leisure, addresses what action is needed from sporting organisations and media platforms, and suggests avenues for future research.

This paper draws on original research from a larger study of racism and Islamophobia online around football, particularly a set of interviews with staff at English football clubs whose responsibility is to manage social media. We use that information alongside our reflections on “platformed racism” to appraise how expressions of racism on social media differ from those in and around the grounds, and how clubs and others in football contest them. This involves a consideration of three themes commonly identified by those speaking on behalf of the clubs: The triggers that ignite racist posts; the partnerships necessary to counter them; and their proposed solutions. Hence this is not just a cue for a collective wringing of hands, but an effort to point the way forward.

This article used a critical sampling approach to investigate a series of football forums which respond to and discuss racism and Islamophobia. A thematic analysis of 1,064 forum posts identified 19 themes which led to the construction of five overarching themes which are: i) racism has decreased; ii) denying and downplaying racism and Islamophobia; iii) racism has increased; iv) victims and perpetrators; and, v) the action that should be taken. Our qualitative analysis illustrates that most of the football fans ascribe to a narrow understanding of racism in that it is perceived as overt. Very few forum participants offered a nuanced understanding of racism meaning that implicit racism, and how it can be challenged, was overlooked. While overt racism and Islamophobia was infrequently observed across the forums, fans’ tendency to downplay racism, and distance themselves from it, was noteworthy as this acts as a barrier to the anti-racist action.

This chapter embarks on a critical naming of, what we call, the 'Banterification' of professional sport clubs’ social media channels. With an emphasis on critical and ethical aspects of communication strategies, the chapter deconstructs how banter is employed as a strategic tool for fan engagement. Drawing on examples from elite sport leagues, the chapter explores the precarious balance between humorous engagement and the risk of causing offence or diluting professional decorum and brand identity. The chapter will raise critical questions about the ethical implications of this form of communication and its possible implications for brand identity and public perceptions of professional sport teams. Finally, it seeks to consider this in the context of a much broader trend of cultural infantilisation, locating the actions of social media managers as both a cause and a symptom of a broader shift indicative of late modern societies.

Research Overview: This research project, commissioned by BUCS and undertaken by the Centre for Social Justice in Sport and Society at Leeds Beckett University, was designed to respond to the recognition that volunteers from diverse ethnic backgrounds are underrepresented within university football, and as participants in BUCS football leadership programmes. The project sought to understand how football clubs, universities, and BUCS can contribute to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in volunteering by producing insight to: • Understand who is engaged and not engaged in university football volunteering. • Gain insight into the football volunteer experience. • Identify the contextual conditions that enable or constrain volunteer engagement.