How do Football Fans Experience Online Abuse? Impacts, Responses and Implications

Online abuse, especially in the context of sport and leisure, is a growing and required area of study. Athletes, journalists and officials have been notably subject to various forms of abuse on major social media platforms, and this, in turn, has prompted responses from scholars, media organisations and sports authorities. One stakeholder who’s experience of online abuse has gone largely unexamined, however, is fans. In existing research, fans have generally been conceived of as perpetrators of abuse. The potential for them to be victims of abuse or, indeed, active participants in the struggle against it, has been overlooked, leaving the risk that fans may be regarded by authorities as a problem to be managed. To address this dearth, we have conducted a survey of over 2000 football (soccer) fans, gathering insights on their opinions and experience of online abuse in the sport they follow. Our findings reveal not only the impact, specifically on well-being, and regularity of online abuse suffered by fans, but also point towards what triggers abuse against them and how some of them end up perpetrating abuse. In doing so, this paper asserts the significance of leisure as a social milieu for understanding online abuse.