Audio file

Ep 4 - Crossing the Line v1.1.mp3

Transcript

 Lizzi

Hello, I'm Lizzi Regan and welcome to life online. The podcast from Ofcom where we talk about all things online, how we feel about it and how to keep people safe.

Hot on the heels of the Lionesses Historic win against Germany in the women's Euro final and on the eve of the new Premier League season kicking off this episode shines a light on a darker side to the beautiful game.

We're recording live from Manchester’s National Football Museum where Ofcom and the Alan Turing Institute are launching the findings of a new groundbreaking study into Twitter abuse sent to Premier League footballers.

We found that nearly 60,000 abusive posts were sent to players during a five month period last season, affecting 7 in 10 tops like.

Hosted by BT Sport presenter Jules Breach, you're about to hear from a panel of experts: broadcaster and England legend Gary Lineker; Manchester United defender Aoife Mannion, PFA chief exec Maheta Malango; and Kick It Out chair Sanjay Bhandari respond to the report. They talked candidly about their own experiences and what can be done to stamp out online abuse from the game.

[Clip of Aoife Mannion]
 “So sometimes it's not so much the kind of dribs and drabs of negative comments that you might see over the course of a week or two weeks. It's one particular tweet or one particular event being a catalyst for abuse, and I think that's where we really, really need to pay attention to.”

[Clip of Gary Lineker]

“It's unacceptable, but we've got to think about ways that we deal with it, but perhaps the you know the first way is actually to recognise that it is a fact, and that's why this is so important today.”

Lizzi

Before we kick off, I should say our discussion may cover some challenging themes. Also, you'll hear opinions that are those of our panellists and not necessarily of Ofcom.

So team talk over: let's get into the action.

Jules

Thanks very much and so, let me just introduce everyone. We've got Gary Lineker, former England captain and broadcaster, sat right next to me here.

Alongside him, we've got Maheta Molango from the PFA. Sanjay Bhandari from. Kick It Out. Manchester United defender Aoife Mannion and Richard Wronka from Ofcom.

So some really interesting stuff that we've all seen there and been able to digest as well. Was there anything that particularly surprised you, Gary?

Gary

I don't think I was overly surprised, I think from my own experience of watching replies to footballers over the years, I think the massive amount of tweets and obviously posts are pretty positive. Generally I think most fans will probably be positive most of the time, and then it's a very emotive game. Football and and fans can get very upset and perhaps sometimes cross the line and get abusive and it it's probably not that frequent.

But there will be, and it's a very small percentage, but a very small percentage of 2.3 million tweets is still a lot of abuse. It will be probably serial offenders and and that's obviously what we need to target and and how we address this situation is obviously… There's a lot of food for thought in it, but it's very important to get the report in the first place so you can actually say this is a real thing, and this is, you know, genuine problem, and I think the research into it is it has to be welcomed and then then we work out what to do about it.

Jules

I think as the research has showed and Andy pointed out at the start as well is that there is a great deal of positivity on social media. The sad part is, is that even when you receive one negative message on social media, it can really affect your mood and your performance as well.

And that's what we need to stop Aoife. So as a player in the women's game, despite the fact that we've seen an incredible last month of football in this country which climax in Sunday's events. As a player yourself. Do you choose to not use social media the same way that some of your friends who don't work in football do.

Aoife

Well, I think it's part of the human condition. Isn't it? That if you get 1000 tweets, it's that one negative tweet that that sort of hits the most, and I think there's a real visceral emotion that's attached to reading negative tweets.

And I was really interested to hear about how the AI machine learning experts were sort of quantifying and working out all the data on what constitutes positive, negative, critical and abuse. And I think part of the problem is that as footballers, we're not actually always sure what is abuse? We know what negative is and we know what that feels like, but we're not always sure about when it crosses the line.

Now, the most obvious reason and circumstance when it crosses the line, and I'm sure Sanjay Kick at It Out will talk more about this is when it's directed against a protected characteristic so race potentially more relevant for the women game gender, but it was. It was super interesting for me personally to see the report because it gives the data and the language to the anecdotes and the stories that we as players feel. 

When I was telling the girls today that I was going to do this. I said, oh, I'm going to be discussing a report delivered by the Alan Turing Institute, and you can imagine we didn't all know what that meant.

And then I said, oh, it's  going to be on a panel with Ofcom and they didn't really know all of them exactly what that meant, but when I said it was about abuse directed towards footballers in this instance professional and Premier League footballers, everyone knew what that meant and everyone wanted to share their story. So, for me, I'm really excited to be on this panel and listening to all of the insights that everyone is going to be sharing.

Gary

How many of them said who does Alan Turing play for?

Aoife

They all knew who Benedict Cumberbatch was!

Jules

And Maheta, so, in terms of the work that the PFA have been doing does the research that the guys have presented to us today reflect similar research and findings that you've had with working with players as well? Yes.

Maheta

Yes, absolutely, and I think the comment that you just made it very interesting in the sense of why is it the players responsibility to do something about that? So like you playing for in front of 40,000 people, someone abusing you and the rest blowing the whistle saying stop. You deal with this guy. No, why did you need to push the button saying I don't want to see this comment. Why do I need to adapt the way that I interact in social media because I'm a player, I'm a human being, you know. So I think what we're hearing is 2 things is one. You know the players don't want to be in the role of the victim, You know it shouldn't be them. They want to be known because of their skills, not because they were abused online, so there needs to be someone who can deal with that.

And second, I think is a question of having real life consequences. I think this goes to the point that Andy was making the beginning, which is, you know, what is the consequence of this feeling of impunity. I think this is the source of frustration. Why do we tolerate stuff online that wouldn't be tolerated on the street, and I think the work that we've done. I think last year in terms of commissioning report ourselves was there are ways to actually identify those people, meaning can report them to the social platform. You can report them to the police, but equally can link them to a club, and then probably banned them from the stadium, which can be the toughest real life consequence you can have for them not to be able to see your club.

Jules

These findings that we've seen today as we know are based on Twitter research Sanjay, but our social media platforms across the board doing enough.

Sanjay

Well, I think the data speaks for itself, doesn't it? I mean, whatever our stories are, when you see 2.3 million tweets and the volume of abuse, 70% of players experiencing abuse, you look at the number of you know in front of thousands and thousands of fans in an online crowd. So it's not just the fact that the players are abused, it's like all the people who are witnessing it, and when we combine that data with other data that I've seen, transparency reports from other platforms. We did some of the initial research with the PFA and another AI Company a couple of years ago. You know I did the sort of back of an envelope calculations and when I combine that data it is a piece of abuse every minute of every day, 365 days a year.

That is an industrial scale problem and that requires industrial scale solutions.

You know it's very tempting to fall into the trap of thinking these are individuals. What we actually know is these are accounts we don't know that these are individuals. There's a directing mind and will behind every one of these, but some of this is industrialised. We have burner accounts that are set-up. Send one tweet and then are deleted.

Now this is the some of this is conservative and part of the challenge we have is we don't have the taxonomy of hate. We don't really know who's doing it. Where are they? Why are they doing it? And unless we have that granularity of detail, you can't really have solutions 'cause unless you know the problem you're dealing with, you can't have solutions so.

A lot of what we've been doing over the last three years, working with government. Working with Ofcom is around, you know, submissions to the government, submissions to the legislation. One of the things that we've said is that Ofcom has a power to require transparency reports.

In our last submission 2 months ago, we put 12 categories of data that we want Ofcom to request from the platforms to enable them to regulate properly, they need the tools and resources and the government needs to give them the tools and resources to regulate properly, this is the Wild West and it needs to stop being the Wild West.

Jules

As we saw in the Alan Turing findings as well, the growth of online use continues to increase and we imagine that that's going to continually do so, Richard. How concerned are you that that is going to correlate with the growth of abuse online?

Richard

Absolutely. So Ofcom’s got a really important role here as the online safety regulator in waiting and online use. As we've seen from the stats today is already incredibly significant, is only going to become a more important part of our lives as we look for Board and we can think of new services developing and potentially kind of new risks and new harms developing overtime so we've got a really important job to keep abreast of those changes as they happen.

Jules

And Gary from a player and broadcaster perspective. With someone who has as big a following as you do. Do you look at the notifications so you see what people are replying to?

Gary

I think there are two columns, aren't they? There's notifications from all in sundry, and then there's notifications of people that I'd follow and blue tick holders. So sometimes I'll look at the blue tick holders and people have followed, 'cause I'll probably get notified.

Uhm, I don't tend to look at the other column because a there are thousands all the time and you will see the odd abusive Twin and I've had that, and obviously there was no social media when I played. I often think to myself. What would I do now?

Jules

Do you think you would have been on social media as a player?

Gary

I think I probably would. I think like most players, I think it's an important and it's a lovely link between you and the fans that you could never have in mind. OK, but what would have happened in my days is I think I'd do exactly the same thing as I did. Then when I played really well and scored a goal, I would buy all the newspapers the next.

When I when I played badly, I never bought any and I think I'd be exactly the same on social media if I played poorly and had a bad game, I wouldn't. I wouldn't look at all, but if I scored and played really well I'd be all over it. I think different people different will do it in different ways.

Some point you know, some players will have, you know, be very sensitive. Be fragile, have mental health issues. And they have to think about what they do, but it shouldn't be their problem. And we we've got to try and address this because it's. But it's very difficult to do so. I think anonymity is something that that has to change. I think to be allowed to be online and be completely anonymous to everybody including the social platform I I think is wrong. But yeah, I deal with it. 

I'm pretty strong mentally - always have been - I always took it as a compliment when the fans used to sing “Gary Linekar, Gary Linekar, you’re a…” you know, set when it was my own fans then it was a bit of a problem.

But no, I think it's I think different players will be able to deal with it and some won't. But I think what we can all agree on Is that it shouldn't be like this, but what do you do and how do we cope with it? Hopefully they'll be technology that comes along that can perhaps eradicate it immediately before anyone sees it, but I think the first step would be to get rid of the anonymous accounts because they're so often from those from my experience.

Jules

If they let us into some of the emotions that you've experienced, then when maybe similar to Gary on the odd occasion when you have looked down the column of potential abuse on Twitter, where you've seen something Negative, how does it make you feel?

Aoife

Well, firstly I agree with Gary about engaging more on Twitter. When I think I've done a good job, I didn't score goals or particularly set them up.

I'm a defender, so I know if I've been the cause of conceding a goal. I'm probably not interrupting on Twitter much the following day, and I'll give one example. Uhm, I'm currently rehabbing an ACL injury so that will have me out for probably about 10:50 months now. The incident where I did that injury actually really messed up I. I sort of had an awkward twist with a really prolific striker, and lo and behold, you know you could read it on the wall.

You know she scored, which was fine in of itself. I actually found really spicy on Twitter and most of us to some degree, do mute notifications from people that we might not know that there is that level of management, but there are algorithms on Twitter such that you can see suggested tweets based on trends.

So I I had one experience where just because Twitter had clocked on that I follow football types of accounts. I saw Twitter abuse. Potentially it wasn't quite abuse. It was definitely negative. It felt very negative all about me and what I'd done in that moment, and I hadn't even followed the account and I hadn't even searched for it.

That was just on my homepage and so you can imagine that does feel a very negative and I I feel sorry for more for my family that that do have to read and interact with those sorts of things. Gary will know that over time you do become hardened to it.

Abuse and negativity doesn't cut the same, but for some people that could be the difference between positive mental health or otherwise. So we shouldn't. We shouldn't make it normal and we shouldn't make it acceptable.

Jules

The header from the players that you speak to does social media abuse ever come to a point with them where they actually think there's no point being on social media anymore?

Maheta

It's a very good question I. I think sometime it's a question of explaining why are you in the social media in the first place. What are you trying to achieve now? And I think once you Understand that it's a loudspeaker that that enables you to convey a message without anyone asking a question. And it's a tool to drive change. Then you tell them you wouldn't forcibly judge your performance based on what the fencing because normally not as good as they claim you to be. Any not as bad as they claim you to be.

So apply the same reasoning to what happened in the social media. So you use this as a way to convey your message when no one asked your question about what you want to talk about.

But equally, don't pay too much attention about what comes back, but I guess the main issue is not possibly you but your environment. I mean your family, your friends, that's the problem. Hence the reason why they feel like someone needs to take care of this irrespective of them actually ActionAid. So it needs to be like someone needs to deal with it and there are ways to do it and there are ways to identify those people hands? Why don't we do something about that now?

Jules

Yeah, how often are players coming to you Sanjay or other people in the media to talk about proactively abuse that they're receiving on social media platforms online?

Sanjay

Yeah, we see it. Probably matter, probably has more from the players, but I suppose what we see is everyone else in football? Because actually this this abuse is for people is experienced by people who play, watch and work in football. It isn't just the current players, its former players, it's Pundits it's LGBT fan groups, you know. And actually there's lots of talk about free speech. Some people are intimidated off the platforms we've seen.

We talked about one before, you know. High profile pundit. Just intimidated off the platform, doesn't want to be on there. It doesn't want to be because of the volume and the. Not just the volume, it's the kind of violence of the abuse.

And so Really a lot of what we see is more collecting from across lots of different platforms. Whether things are coming in through the PFA, we have weekly meetings with the UK Football Policing Unit, things that are coming into the Premier League, the Premier League have an active monitoring system and they doing the initial phases of the investigation.

We, I mean, it's great that they're doing that. It's utterly ridiculous that they're doing that. That's law enforcement job. That's the government job. Why is the Premier League doing the government job? So there's there are lots of these things and lots of complaints that we see.

But I think that one of the really important Things is that We use the profile of the high profile footballers to shine a light on this problem for everybody 'cause it's a problem for everybody in the game for anyone who watches it, you will get some of the abuse.

I'll get some abuse and you know fan groups. People who don't have resources to respond will get abuse, and so we're engaged in the solutions for everybody.

Jules

Richard, what are the differences then from Ofcom's perspective of negativity and criticism as opposed to abuse?

Richard

Well, and the report does recognise that that sometimes drawing that line can be quite difficult and there are some edge cases and you know, I think of examples in football language or we might use words like dirty or disgusting.

Richard

Now, in some forms of abuse that's likely to be highly problematic football that might refer to a bad tackle, right? So there are. There are some issues and some tricky.

Richard

Edge cases to work through and we recognise that in the report.

And I would say it's not off common job as or in the future as the online safety regulator to provide very specific advice on how companies do this.

Our role will be to make sure that companies tech companies are clear with their users about where they draw the line.

And as the online safety bill stands today, they will have some flexibility to decide how permissive they want to be around legal speech. Clearly it's a very different situation for illegal content where all services who are captured by the online safety regime will.

Richard

To take proactive steps to tackle that kind of illegal content on their platforms.

Jules

What would you consider to be negative Gary as opposed to abusive? How would you differentiate?

Gary

Oh, that's a good question. I think they can overlap at times. No question about that. Uhm, you know?

Being critical of, perhaps with performance, whether you're as a presenter or you mess something up and someone says oh, you fluffed your lines or and you absolute.

Gary

Abusive word that very clearly it differentiates between the two. Uhm, I think it's. I think most of the time I think we can recognise when something is particularly out of order. I think that's.

Gary

I think most of us would work that out for ourselves. What you can accept as actually fair criticism to actually blatant abuse.

Jules

Do you think Aether from a player's perspective?

Jules

The more we're seeing abuse on social media when it comes to crossing the line, we're actually seeing that filter into stadiums more or into actually day-to-day life when you come across people.

Aoife

Yes, I do think that it is a problem. I think with the increased visibility and exposure of football through these platforms.

Aoife

Obviously, Gary mentioned that Twitter wasn't as much of a thing wasn't as about when he was playing, but it does allow us to connect with fans and supporters.

Aoife

Is it in a way that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do, particularly for women football? Because the game isn't as well established, so it's kind of a deal with the devil.

Aoife

In some ways we do need it. We want it because we want the exposure and the visibility that we get from it. We don't want the abuse. And when you ask Gary about you know what is the difference between.

Aoife

Negativity and abuse. Two things came into my mind. Two particular distinctions, and one was Gary kind of touched on it. Sort of action orientated or performance orientated comments. Uhm as opposed to you as a person so.

Aoife

You did a bad tackle. Feels very different to you or something so that's one distinction. And then the other clear distinction.

Aoife

I'm not sure so much how this would be picked up in. The data is almost like a pile on effect from specific instances, so sometimes it's not so much the kind of dribs and drabs of negative comments that you might see over the course of a week.

Aoife

Or two weeks, you know, on any given week, I might see a handful of gendered based, abusive comments. It's kind of 1 particular tweet or one particular event from being a catalyst for abuse.

Aoife

And I think that's where we really, really need to pay attention to. And in in a broader society, that's where we've had problems with, let's say reality TV shows like Love Island.

We know we know what, what, what can happen on the dark side of things. So those are two distinctions that I would really like to sort of see spoken about more in a wide discussion.

Jules

So how do we tackle the problem then? I think we should probably hear from everyone on this. I'll start with you Aoife, what do you think needs to be done to help eradicate social media abuse?

Aoife

I agree with what Andy said in his opening remarks. Again, Gary touched on it as well. The veil of anonymity emboldens people to make abuse of a tweet.

So at the very minimum, I think some sort of ID should be required to sign up to these platforms.

Twitter is a very, uh, you know, complex and advanced system. They have algorithms where they can demote tweets by people who are potentially not signed up in a in a verification or identification sense. I don't think it should just be quote, unquote celebrities or famous people or.

People of interest. I have a blue tick. I would like to see that for everyone, I think that if you were able to say something, or if you said something that was abusive out loud now and it was deemed a criminal offence, why should you be able to hide behind a screen and say that on Twitter as well? So for me we have to reduce the veil of anonymity.

Jules

What do you think?

Gary

I couldn't put it more eloquently. To be perfectly, I think it's absolutely spot on.

Jules

So who is responsible for this then? Sanjay? Is it, the government? Is it the social media platforms? How can we tackle this and ensure that that is something that is put into?

Sanjay

Place when you start that question I thought. I thought you meant it was me. I, I think in order of your ability to influence change, it's social media, government and then we what we can do in football and in football from you know, governing bodies through charities like us to you know, players, fans, participants at grassroots journalists. Everyone can have a role to play. I think the most immediate.

Sanjay

Role and the most urgent priority is government because we have this online safety bill, you know we've it's been talked about for probably five years. It's been going through.

Sanjay

Parliament for the last year and a half we've had a couple of draughts, I think I've given evidence twice. We've done 3 or 4 written submissions. A lot of the recommendations that we've been united in football is one of the things where because we're David in this David and Goliath battle against these behemoth social media companies, we've actually pretty good.

But working together across the whole of football, so many of our recommendations have made it in and actually the stage that is, it's paused.

If we need to get that over the line when it comes back in September, October at some point in the bottom lots of things in there that will deal with some of the issues that we talked about. Actually, so pylons the way that harm is defined now includes the manner of dissemination of information which is deliberately designed to include things like pylons and anonymity. There's a specific clause in there that says.

Sanjay

Identity verification, should you must provide that as an option and that therefore users can control who they interact with and what content they see. So if you don't want to see content from a user that's not being verified, you can.

That's a button that you can click, and that's supposed to be put in with the new bill. So government job first get the bill over the line. Second, is provide Ofcom and law enforcement with the resources they need to be really effective.

We will help and support Ofcom. I've got a list of a dozen transparency reporting requirements I want to see based on my experience of the last three years of banging my head against a brick wall asking for this data from social media companies because it's the transparency reports that will help us to unlock what's actually happening.

So I've given my laundry list of the government and I'm going to give it to you. See Richard now, and we're going to try and get that in through the through the codes of conduct. So then the first responsibility is government.

Yeah, I'll come back to social media. What can we in football do? We're gonna continue to do what we have done.

We're gonna cook, collaborate, we we're gonna continue to lobby the government for the online safety bill. We're going to continue to work with Ofcom and help support the government in getting the codes of practise in and making the system as we want it to be.

We also work with the social media companies to identify things that they can do now to add friction to the system.

Things like, you know, little things that have been added, like do you really want to send this tweet? And actually that does take out down quite a lot, just a little intervention. A little bit of friction to put into the system and maybe preventing.

People, if there's a new Twitter new, uh, a new user, you're disqualified from sending a.

Uh, a message or a?

We'd tagging in a blue tick account. You know those kinds of things it present prevents the burner case. These little things that can have quite big impacts.

Uhm, but what we what we will also do in football and continue to do is.

Educate players fans. How to you know how to keep themselves safe online?

If you're a fan, if you see it, just report it. Whether it's the Premier League to the FA, to us, to the PFA, to the social media companies, to all of us, I don't care.

Just make sure that you report it, but look ultimately it comes back to the people with the most influence of the most power, and that's the social media companies themselves. And let's remember what they are.

They are contextual analytics businesses. They make money out of me and you. They know when I have been searching for these white trainers 5 minutes later, those white trainers appear in. Do you want to buy these in my food? They know that level of detail about me.

All I want them to do is to use that technology that they use to sell me stuff. Use it to keep me safe, use it to get you safe.

Use it to keep everyone safe who plays watches and works in football. They have the technology. They make millions and billions you know metre is the size of a nation state with nearly a trillion dollars of turnover.

You have the resources. The reason you're not doing it is it doesn't make you money.

So they're not gonna do it. We should speak softly and carry a big stick, but we need that online safety bill, 'cause that's our big stick.

Jules

So, Richard, what ability and power do Ofcom particularly have in order to act in this space, you think?

Richard

Well, just to build on the the really helpful comments we've heard so far, I'd say prevention is better than cure, and that's definitely a theme that comes out of this discussion. For me. I think there's some really interesting approaches that tech companies can take.

And the point about discouraging people from making abusive posts in the 1st place is a really important one.

Ofcom doesn't have powers right now other than the ability to do research like this. We're hopeful that the online safety bill will become law early next year. I think one message from us is that tech companies don't need to wait for regulation.

Right, this is a problem that's affecting people. Now we've heard some really powerful evidence first hand and second hand, from from the panellists and in the in the report. And so we think that tech companies can be making improvements right now.

Jules

Could you summarise for us what the online safety bill is for anyone that doesn't know?

Richard

Yes, so the online safety bill is a very important also quite complex piece of legislation which is winding its way through Parliament at the moment.

It sets out a kind of new approach to independent regulation for all tech services, which allow users to communicate with each other effectively online and their main responsibilities are to understand the risks that their services provide to users and then to put in place steps that will mitigate those risks.

The particular focus on the legal content. There's a particular focus on protection of children, and in addition to that, there are requirements around transparency for the for the biggest surfaces.

And it gives off Commons, the regulator overseeing all of this.

Enforcement powers to make sure that companies are complying with those duties.

Jules

OK, so meta as we head into a new Premier League season which gets underway on Friday evening.

How do you hope players and fans engage on social media going forward?

Maheta

Look, maybe it's wishful thinking about, but I think it was fantastic to see the atmosphere around the woman, euros, the atmosphere in the stadium.

The approach they took to the final, the approach to the tournament was just very very positive, and in fact I was just discussing this before before the event.

But from it was telling that.

Even though Germany left, the fans stayed in the thing until the.

End because it was a cool event because they wanted to enjoy, so I think.

I think let's learn what is working on the men's side and applied, but let's make sure that we can also learn a lot from what is working very.

Well in women side.

So I would hope we take this positive ITI this positive approach. This you know, willingness to enjoy together and being positive that I think we need to learn from. From what we've seen this this summer and you know it came back home so.

Hopefully we can build on that.

Jules

Excellent stuff, thank you very much everybody.

Gary

I think everyone of us is concerned within the game that players can face abuse. Perhaps having a bad game, perhaps a bad result.

Gary

Can happen and I think that it's patently obvious that there's a lot of abuse that goes on that can be exceptionally upsetting for footballers.

It's unacceptable, but we've got to think about ways that we deal with it, but perhaps the you know the 1st way is actually to recognise that it is a fact, and that's why this is so important today.

I think with all these things it's perhaps about hopefully education. You know some of the abuse is, you know, might just be a bit of motive on the day of a game.

And perhaps fans maybe go across the line without actually thinking. So can we educate those people to think more?

Well, obviously there are some people that perhaps do it consistently, maybe on a racist basis that is more difficult to address.

That's when I think it becomes within the parameters.

Of the law.

And they have to address it so, but it's.

But the fact we're starting to talk about it, I think, is very important.

So Jules, what the big changes?

You'd like to see.

To try and address this problem.

Jules

I just think that there needs to be someone who takes control and says this is exactly what's going to happen with anyone who is abusive on social media and two players or people who.

Jules

In the public profile, public profile or anyone of that matter really? Because this is not just affecting people that work.

You know, in the media or football, but you know everyone is potentially subject to abuse when you put yourself out on a social media platform. So I think that there just needs to be someone or somebody who actually takes.

You might change.

Control of this and there needs to be somewhere you can report and that action can be taken and once we know that.

That's possible, and it's actually in place. I think everyone will feel like it's a safe place to be.

Right?

Absolutely. And is it something you've had personal experience of as well? And you know, we talked a lot about this session around abuse on Twitter, but of course of course it's across lots of platforms. It's something you've experienced.

Jules

Unfortunately, yes, and I think being a female in a largely male dominated industry and we are subject to it as women in football and and that tends to be.

Usually men.

Targeting the women and saying you know what do you know about football? Why are you doing this job? And more recently with more opportunities being awarded to women to you know, perhaps present or be pundits or commentators across football. It's quite often OK. Another woman I won't be watching that or.

You know what does she know about football? Or I'm not going to listen to that. If there's female presenting or commentating or being a pundit?

On that and.

I think that's really unfortunate they could.

Football is for everyone, and the more women there are presenting or being pundits or playing football like we've just seen our incredible lionesses with euros.

The more that younger girls can actually see it as a career opportunity. So yeah, it's.

Sad, but it.

Happens, and unfortunately I don't see it going away.

Thanks very much yours.

Sanjay

Any of us can experience that online abuse. Anyone engaged in football can experience that online abuse and right from players. But fans.

Pundits people who work in the game, we've had chief executives experiencing it, so it it. It's across all parts of the football industry, but actually to even broader issue, I think it it. It's really about this kind of society. We want to live in because the.

The culture of our society is set by the worst behaviour that we.

Except and if the worst behaviour we accept is online sadly doesn't end online.

So if we see abuse in online.

We'll hear it on the sidelines if we accept abuse on social media, we should expect it. It's our local park, absolutely and.

I was really interested to hear you talk about some of the rehabilitation work that you do with people who have previously offended that have crossed the line. Could you tell us a bit more about?

What that involves?

Yeah, so we have a fan education programme and if someone has.

Transgress has been found guilty either of the you know, criminal offences will read by a by a club of breaching their standards and guidelines and then with some active discrimination there'll be an initial sort of process with the clubs to understand whether someone amenable to education. Because, you know, very often.

In and around the ground it things are driven by alcohol and cocaine and driving more broadly antisocial behaviour and it might be a you know, a momentary out of character comment.

Look, obviously if someone is a career racist, unlikely to do education with it, 'cause we don't something likely that it's going to be effective. But generally if someone apologetic and contrite.

You know we will offer this education programme and it's a kind of an alternative to a lifetime ban is right.

Well, OK, instead of a lifetime ban, maybe you know six months or a year weather, but you go through an education programme and what we and we do the same with some online as well.

And it's really about helping them to understand the impact of their behaviour. So there is an example. I think you know what somewhat high profile.

Player that was abused during lockdown, you know huge Twitter pitchfork mob.

We generated and you know, calling for all sorts of punishment for the perpetrator. Of course, when we find the perpetrator is a 15 year old kid and he didn't realise that what he was doing was wrong and so we get to speak to that child.

And with the local police and with the club.

And we involved them and say get her to understand.

What they what they were doing? And did they understand the nature of what they're doing and the impact of that behaviour on other people?

Because we think it you can't just ban new pans or importance, but you can't just ban your way out of these things.

It's much better to have conversations and dialogue and help people to understand. So we think education is a really important part of the process, including once someone.

Jules

Perfect.

Sanjay

Offended and bringing them back into the game.

Absolutely sounds like fascinating work, and we're on the eve of the new season. Some of the games already underway in the Football League.

From a fans perspective, what's your? What's your message to them if if if you know we know it's a game of high emotions of big opinions.

Social media is where a lot of that debate takes. What would you say to fans in in light of?

Today's findings.

Oh yes to rivalry. Yes to banter, no to hate.

He's not that.

We all know where the line is and we all know when people have crossed it and you know.

And you know when people around you across that.

Line, don't be a bystander. Call it out.

Absolutely fantastic message. Sandy Bandari thank.

 Lizzi

All thanks to all our panellists for speaking so openly and honestly and the team at the Alan Turing Institute for such a fantastic piece of research.

You very much.

 Lizzi

Let's hope that in the 2022-2023 football season we're talking more about the quality of the action on the pitch rather than online abuse off it. So that's the final whistle.

 Lizzi

But you can head to ofcom.org.uk for some more post match analysis of the research and we'll see you next time here at life online.