Tackling online abuse alone won’t solve your problems…it certainly won’t save your reputation
‘Ending digital violence’ is this year’s theme for UN Women’s ‘16 Days of Activism to End Gender-based Violence’ campaign.
Online harm is one of the fastest growing forms of abuse in sport. Just ask the many elite athletes who have spoken publicly of its rise in the past 5 years. Sports institutions and governing bodies have jumped to action with ‘solutions’. While the abuse-blocking apps and prevalence reviews may look cutting-edge, I fear they are convenient distractions from deep and unresolved internal safeguarding failures.
Online abuse causes true harm. We may have grown up with the myth that “words can never hurt me” but it couldn’t be further from the truth. The harassment, threats, misogyny, racism and homophobia targeted at athletes online have real and lasting impacts on mental and physical health, performance, and long-term wellbeing. Online abuse does not always stay in the digital world and can lead to own-person violence and stalking. If we think it’s bad now, there’s an increased concern of a new wave of online abuse including AI-enabled online harm and deepfake pornography, fueled by the misogynistic online radicalisation targeting young men.
This is not an article about needing a hierarchy of harm, or a call for institutions to stop tackling online abuse. The problem of online abuse is real. This article aims to illustrate that institutional responses to types of harm in sport are selective. Simply put, sports institutions are more than happy to deal with abuse in sport…when it’s not their reputation on the line.
Solutions to online abuse in sport have hit the headlines, notably the International Olympic Committee deploying ‘AI to erase abusive social media posts’ and rolling out helplines to address online abuse. The IOC President’s strategy talks of “harnessing AI to engage athletes digitally” and having “zero tolerance for corruption, doping and unethical behavior”. Similarly, World Athletics have boasted their ‘four year analysis of online abuse’ and proudly announced year-round AI protection of a generous 25 athletes.
Yet, the IOC President failed to mention abuse, safeguarding or athlete protection once in her strategy, hiding away from the decades of harm caused by the organisation she inherited. I guess it is easier to moderate Twitter posts than build a truly independent safeguarding system, easier to spout news of zero tolerance for unethical behavior than actually stand with survivors calling for a convicted child rapist to be banned from the Paris Olympic Games. All of this, however, would require admitting the world of sport has an abuse problem in the first place.
I keep asking myself why digital monitoring is growing faster than internal safeguarding reform. The answer, I fear, is not a resource issue. The real reason is a lack of institutional courage. The fear of creating a safeguarding system that works for athletes because you know it will lead to a PR disaster. The fear of lifting up the rug knowing there’s decades of injustice, hurt and human rights failings that will become your problem if you dare look. After all, It’s less risky to point the finger at online bullies than deal with your own institution’s failings (and the lasting harm they’ve inflicted on their athletes, or something like that). You might even get a positive headline or two!
I’ve been noticing this pattern for some time: organisations promote street-safety initiatives, online abuse awareness campaigns and efforts that fixate on trans women’s participation in sport - all in the name of women’s safety. Contemporaneously, they ignore their own organisation’s perpetuation of abuse and harm of athletes within coaching, training and team environments. These efforts create the appearance of action without requiring organisations to have the courage to confront the abuse happening inside their own four walls. They give themselves a reason to pat themselves on the back for reactive campaigns without doing the hard work to tackle the deep-rooted systems and culture that allow for harm in the first place.
The danger is while ignoring the root causes of abuse, institutions will celebrate tackling online abuse and feel they have solved the cutting edge of harm in sport. As a result, they’ll continue to take no to little retroactive or preventative action on the systemic and pervasive abuse they have known about and have not dealt with. The term “band aids on bullet holes” comes to mind.
Digital tools and PR friendly initiatives aren’t a substitute for cultural change - this isn’t a problem we can ‘tech’ our way out of. It isn’t particularly clear if athletes really want these tech solutions, with some athletes fearing the apps that blocks abusive messages does more harm than good by essentially ‘deleting’ the abuse, and with it all evidence of the problem. The harm has been inflicted and deeply felt by the athlete, and is then erased as though it never happened, without any consequence for the keyboard abuser.
Safeguarding failures inside sport are historical, systemic and ongoing. If organisations really wanted to tackle the culture that allows for abuse in sport, they would be introducing a blend of preventative action, including coach, athlete and parent education, ring fenced funding for safeguarding; acute support for athletes when they need it, including support for online abuse; and frameworks and processes that hold their organisations accountable. Because the same culture that allows for interpersonal violence in sport is the same culture that allows online abuse to continue, and for athletes to feel unsafe on the streets. It’s not an either/or situation. In fact, it can’t be.
