Fourth major study into online abuse raises concerns over continued levels of abuse of a racist or sexual nature
Key findings:
- Racism and sexualised abuse continue to be used to target athletes, making up more than 48% of the results
- 809 total posts were verified as abusive, with 128 posts and comments (16%) escalated to the relevant platform for additional action
- 1,917 athletes with at least one active account were monitored for online abuse during the Paris Games across four social media platforms – 12 times the size sampled during the Tokyo Olympics
As World Mental Health Month draws to a close, World Athletics today (31 October) publishes findings from a study conducted during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games aimed to identify and protect athletes from abusive messages sent via social media platforms.
The study is the fourth of its kind published by World Athletics in the past four years, covering the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the 2022 and 2023 World Athletics Championships in Oregon and Budapest respectively and now the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The research was conducted in collaboration with Signify Group, using its Threat Matrix service powered by artificial intelligence, to investigate online harassment of athletes during the Olympic Games. The study published today focuses on the findings of this year’s research, with a detailed four-year analysis to follow later this year.
Building on several initiatives to implement greater safeguarding measures in athletics, including the introduction of mandatory safeguarding policies at Member Federation level, the study monitored the social media accounts of 1,917 athletes, reserves and officials from the sport of athletics for the entirety of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (24 July – 11 August 2024), while also including the 24 hours before and after the Games’ start and end dates. The sample size is 12 times bigger than the research conducted at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
A total of 355,873 posts and comments were captured and analysed for abusive content across 36 different languages and dialects, with 34,040 posts being flagged by the Threat Matrix AI algorithm for review by human analysis. Each of the athletes covered had one or more active accounts across four social media platforms – X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. From the study, a total of 809 posts were verified to be of an abusive nature.
Racism (18%) and sexualised abuse (30%) continue to be the biggest issue, making up more than 48% of the total detected abuse, while general abuse* makes up 32% of the total detected abuse.
Two athletes were particularly heavily targeted, accounting for 82% of all detected abuse between them. Overall, verifiable abuse was directed at athletes representing 20 different nations with 49% of abuse directed at US athletes, despite them only representing 7.8% of the study athletes set.
Racism was the largest category of detected abuse targeting male athletes, making up 26% of total abuse directed at male athletes, while female athletes were targeted with a mixture of sexual and sexist abuse and almost half of the detected content falling under the general abuse category (49%).
“It is no secret that social media abuse towards athletes can have a devastating impact on their mental health as well as their performance,” said World Athletics President Sebastian Coe of the study findings.
“Having a social media presence is important for many athletes because it enables them to connect with their fans, as well as deliver on endorsement commitments. Many athletes are committed to growing the sport of athletics through their online presence, but they need to be able to do so in a safe environment. We are proud of many of our athletes who use their platform to raise awareness on important issues, including speaking out about online abuse and its impact on mental health.
“We will continue our work in this space and use our research to help drive positive change, both with platforms and in developing resources for athletes around their mental health.”
In total, 128 abusive posts and comments were reported to the relevant platforms on behalf of the athletes, while two cases were escalated to higher authorities, further demonstrating the importance of the work that World Athletics and Signify Group are doing in this space to protect athletes from online abuse – on top of the support that some platforms are offering in this space.
Previous research already guided World Athletics initiatives applied during the Paris Olympics including materials highlighting safety tools offered by channels like Instagram and Facebook. In certain cases, additional preventative measures using AI software were offered to ‘at-risk-athletes’ as findings strongly suggest that putting preventative measures in place for already targeted athletes could yield positive results.
While this report focuses on the findings from the Paris Olympic Games, the four-year report covering four major global athletics events due to be released later this year will focus on developments over the course of the past four years. It will also outline measures World Athletics will be taking in the future, including the valuable insights this research will provide to experts in the field of athlete welfare and mental health, to help develop more robust support systems with regards to online abuse.
World Athletics
* General Abuse definition: Content flagged as abusive in nature but does not contain discriminatory language relating to a specific category.
