Internet hate speech: Researchers: No extraordinary increase in hostilities

The fan researcher Jonas Gabler sees no noticeable increase in hate speech in the hostilities on the Internet against players, officials and experts.

“I wouldn’t say that it has gotten worse or worse. It’s a phenomenon that has existed since the beginning of social media. And with more members, the negative comments also increase,” said the managing director of the Fan Cultures and Sport Competence Group related social work (Kofas) of the German Press Agency.

Social media also lowered the “threshold significantly” for expressing one’s feelings. Most recently, the football referee experts “Collinas Erben” withdrew from the Twitter platform after a plethora of insults. Several athletes and officials such as Max Eberl, who will soon be working as managing director of sports at the Bundesliga soccer team RB Leipzig, are being massively attacked online and in the stands.

Two independent camps

But Gabler distinguishes between the two camps: “Hate on the internet and the situation in the stands of the stadiums have to be separated from each other, because they’re not necessarily the same people.”

Irrespective of the riots in European stadiums, the fan expert is not currently observing any dissatisfaction with social problems, but rather a certain euphoria in the stands: “I would agree that more pyrotechnics are being burned at the moment. But that has nothing to do with frustration, but that the fans celebrate the return to the stadiums after Corona.”