Case Study/ Kick It Out

Tackling unprecedented levels of social media abuse Case Study/ Kick It Out Case Study/ Kick It Out

The Story/ At a Glance/ Tackling Abuse on Kick It Out Social Media

Background Key Results The Goal Provide clarity and awareness on social media abuse. Kick It Out • Led to more than 900 published articles in newspapers and online, Kick It Out has been handling complaints about football-related hate crime posted on social media platforms since the 2012/2013 Kick It Out is English football’s (more commonly known as soccer revealing the problem to millions of football season. in North America) equality and inclusion organisation, founded people around the world Kick It Out knew this abuse was a growing problem. They’d seen the volume of inbound complaints about abuse grow over the last in 1993. • Provoked over 100,000 three years. With no insight on the abuse that did not get reported to the organisation, the body decided to investigate the true extent of the issue by tracking and analysing abusive online comments. Working throughout the football, educational and community conversations about the research sectors, to challenge discrimination, encourage inclusive online, helping generate debate and Kick It Out wanted to use these insights to drive awareness and understanding, informing their own strategies and to help put a awareness of a key issue for the stop to this abuse for good. practices and campaign for positive change. organisation During the 2012/2013 season, Kick It Out started to see a • Helped the organisation understand The Challenge soaring rise in social media abuse towards footballers, clubs and the scale of abusive social mentions fans. Internally, they were seeing the problem grow in scale and and the real nature of the task facing Understand an issue growing at an unprecedented scale. complexity with abuse ranging from sexist to anti-semitic. They the entity decided in January 2015 to reveal the scale of this problem to the Kick It Out wanted to identify to what degree clubs and players within the English are victims of discriminatory abuse on social media platforms. general public by recruiting two leaders in social media analytics. They were eager to understand which football clubs received the majority of the abuse, what forms of discrimination were the most kickitout.org common, where in the country the abuse was predominantly coming from, and whether there were spikes in abuse relating to specific fixtures or incidents occurring in specific games. Tempero To do so, Kick It Out and Tempero (the agency enlisted to carry out the research) needed a powerful social listening platform to filter through the millions of football related tweets, posts and comments on social to locate only the abusive mentions. The world's largest full-service social media management agency, teamed up with Brandwatch, the leading choice in social media Collected monitoring, to collect and report on the scale of social media and analyzed over The Solution abuse within the Premier League. Their report, released in April 2015, revealed some horrifying truths behind the problem and Educate millions through awareness. helped educate the millions of people who read the results. Brandwatch was perfect for this research. The functionality that was most vital was the flexibility of the Query builder, combined with 400,000 the data segmentation ability of Rules, Tags and Categories. tempero.co.uk abusive mentions This research required the tracking of 20 Premier League football teams, more than 400 individual player names and nicknames and hundreds of abusive terms. The advanced boolean Operators allowed Tempero to create several large, complex Queries in the most efficient way possible. Rules, Tags and Categories enabled Tempero to segment the results into distinct teams, specific players, and to group the abuse received into types such as racism, sexism and islamophobia — and instantly start analyzing for comparisons. Case Study/ Kick It Out

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MOST ABUSED PLAYERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Report unveils findings of research into football-related 1. : 8,471 (race) 2. : 1,744 (race) 3. Daniel Sturridge: 1,611 (sexual orientation) hate crime on social media. 4. : 1,513 (race) 5. Yaya Toure: 1,482 (race)

CASES OF ABUSE ON SOCIAL MEDIA earned coverage on publications such as 22000 The Report Players Clubs BBC, The Guardian, CNN, Mashable and The findings of the report identified The professional player most abused The top five Premier League clubs many other top news outlets, as well as 20000 the most common forms of on social media during the study was who received the most discriminatory request for interviews on TalkSport Radio, discrimination posted across social Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli. abuse were Chelsea, Liverpool, Al Jazeera, BBC News TV and ITV. 18000 media towards clubs and players, and Balotelli was sent more than 8,000 Arsenal, Manchester United and how frequently the abuse occurred. discriminatory posts on social media, Manchester City. The research has given the wider public a better understanding of the issue. The 16000 The report also looked at which clubs of which more than half were racist, a Chelsea received the largest proportion were the main targets for abuse, and truly horrific discovery. work being led by Kick It Out in this area, of abusive posts with over 20,000 the reporting procedures in place enabling 14000 further investigation was undertaken Race wasn’t the only form of abuse the messages; Liverpool, 19,000; Arsenal, on specific players. social media users to register complaints, report unearthed. Balotelli’s teammate 12,000; Manchester United and 12000 and the need for collective responsibility Daniel Sturridge was another victim. Manchester City, with 11,000 each. to be taken by the main bodies across During the study over 1,600 football, the police and social media MENTIONS 10000 “Not only do they have a best discriminatory posts were aimed at the platforms, to confront the problem. in class social monitoring The Reaction 8000 English international, over 60% of those platform, the people at posts were abusing him on the grounds The research itself unsurprisingly of sexual orientation. resonated strongly with the football The Future 6000 Brandwatch are heavily community. The results sparked The aim of the research was to provoke involved with the industry, awareness and educate the footballing 4000 debate throughout the UK and beyond. and care about putting data Matches The media, fans and equal rights community. This report has helped but The report also looked into which groups all showed tremendous interest there’s still work to be done. 2000 to work for social good — a particular matches drove the largest and support towards the campaign, business ethic that also Kick It Out has recommended setting up 0 volume of discriminatory mentions. helping to spread the message. drives what Tempero does.” an expert group to look at the best way Chelsea Liverpool Arsenal Man. United Man. City The Chelsea vs Liverpool clash on In the three days following the public forward and fortunately, with the Mick Conroy January 27th at Chelsea's home ground release of the study, the research awareness this research has provided, FOOTBALL TEAMS Head of Insights & Innovation Stamford Bridge saw over 2,633 abusive generated more than 108,000 mentions genuine steps in that direction are Tempero messages posted online. online. The research and its findings being made. “Only Brandwatch has this type of power to query, combine and segment data — using any other platform would have been incredibly onerous.”

Mick Conroy Head of Insights & Innovation About/ Tempero

Kick It Out Tempero Brandwatch Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading Kick It Out is English football’s equality Tempero is the world's largest social intelligence companies. Its social and inclusion organisation. full-service social media management media listening and analytics technology agency offering integrated Strategy, Working throughout the football, platform gathers millions of online Insight, Moderation and Engagement educational and community sectors to conversations every day and provides for many of the world's largest brands, challenge discrimination, encourage users with the tools to analyze them, 24/7, in multiple languages. inclusive practices and campaign for empowering brands and agencies to positive change. Tempero listens to provide insight and make smarter, data-driven business analysis, they engage to build advocacy, decisions. Since the 2012/2013 season, Kick It Out and they protect against reputation started to see a soaring rise in social Acquiring social influencer analytics firm damage. Tempero are the engine behind abuse towards footballers, clubs and PeerIndex in December 2014, multi-language, multi-platform, fans. Internally, they were seeing the Brandwatch continues on its aggressive multi-territory social media activity. problem grow in scale and complexity business trajectory following on its most with abuse ranging from sexist to tempero.co.uk recent round of venture funding to the anti-semitic. They decided in January tune of $22 million. The Brandwatch 2015 to reveal the scale of this problem platform is used by over 1000 brands to the general public by recruiting two and agencies, including Cisco, Whole leaders in social media analytics. Foods, Whirlpool, British Airways, Sony Music, Papa John’s, and Dell. kickitout.org Brandwatch. Now You Know.

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