Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1392413
13 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 14 JULY 2021 OPINION Euro 2020: could Twitter stop racist abuse before it happens? Nicole Ferdinand, John Bustard, Nigel Williams The authosr are Senior Lecturer, Events Management, Oxford Brookes University; Lecturer, Digital Transformation, Ulster University; Reader, Project Management, University of Portsmouth AS excitement built in England ahead of the Euro 2020 final against Italy, fans took to Twitter to express pride in their diverse and inspiring team. There was also a sense of nervous anticipation at the chance to win a major tournament for the first time in 55 years. Many used the hashtag #Euro2020final to join the conversation before and during the first half of the match. Following a crushing defeat by penal- ty shootout, a dark but familiar picture emerged. Some Twitter users under #Euro2020final posted racist messages against England's black players, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon San- cho. Tweets using #Euro2020final became a sobering reminder of the deep schisms that run through English society. For black British citizens, the tweets reflect- ed a disheartening message about their continued exclusion from mainstream British culture. As social media researchers who have tracked events online by analysing key- words, topics and sentiments organised under hashtags, we were not surprised by what we saw on Twitter following England's defeat. In anticipation of abuse and bullying post-match, we archived tweets just prior to kick-off and kept a close eye on Twitter after the result was announced. We were familiar with the power of English football to dominate Twitter conversations. We used the publicly accessible tool TAGS which archives Twitter postings via a search application programming interface. While this source is not ex- haustive, we were able to collect 32,765 tweets using the hashtag #Euro2020f- inal in the hour leading up to kick-off, 100,282 during the match and 44,554 af- ter the match until midnight. We then applied topic modelling, an approach that uses machine learning to identify underlying themes in large bodies of text to explore the English lan- guage content of tweet text. The following visualisations present the three most prominent topics dur- ing each time period and the three most prominent keywords associated with each of them. Before the match, there was a positive rather than negative framing of the Eng- lish team's international origins, with many sharing stories of immigration, diversity and a "changing" England. Al- so discussed were fans' hopes for a long awaited victory and discussions about a fan incident at Trafalgar square involv- ing police. During the match, the discussions were about Luke Shaw's history-making early goal, Italy's equaliser and the final re- sults. Shaw was among the most popular topics discussed. Post match, the theme of racial abuse emerged. While actual racist posts were tweeted by a small number of people, it should be noted that the structure of on- line discussions, where individual com- ments are shared rapidly among posters, amplified this content into an online firestorm prompting responses from senior government officials. Another dark aspect of the post-match tweets was the discussions around the link between domestic violence and football. Stopping the firestorm Our analysis raises an important ques- tion about whether Twitter ought to take a more proactive role in monitoring and preventing the spread of racist abuse following events such as the Euro 2020 final. Twitter responded to the abuse on its platform by using a combination of machine learning based automation and human review to remove over 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended sev- eral accounts. However, this action failed to effec- tively suppress the negative picture that emerged after the #Euro2020final. We suggest that Twitter could be taking ac- tion to stop online firestorms, even be- fore they start. Twitter trolls know that racist or hate- ful content about a high profile event will be widely condemned online. But condemnation of racist or hateful con- tent only serves to further magnify the impact of these posts on such an event. Any positive message will be overshad- owed by the discussions of hateful or racist posts. What is surprising is that Twitter al- lows the process to continue. There is no ambiguity about these outcomes, only variability in the scale. In contrast to the limited exploration that we per- formed, Twitter has archives of online firestorms in a number of contexts and would be aware of the conditions, char- acteristics and outcomes of these occur- rences. Based on this knowledge, the rapid immediate cascades that result in the predictable cycle of hateful content and condemnation could be minimised using tools Twitter have already devel- oped, such as prompting users to rethink their tweets that may include harmful language. These tools could be adapt- ed to provide warnings that encourage users to think before they retweet, and slow the rate of reactions to hateful con- tent. While not a comprehensive solu- tion, they can be applied in high profile events such as the Euro 2020 final to stem the spread of abuse online. Of course, doing this raises questions about rights to free speech. Twitter re- ceived backlash over its suppression of a New York Post story about Hunter Bid- en. But in some cases, especially where there is potential for violence or an im- mediate threat against people or groups, there may be reasonable justification for taking action. Questions remain around when to in- tervene and the extent to which inter- vention may push hateful discussions to other platforms. Still, it may be well worth exploring – the discussions the day after the Euro 2020 final should have been about a history-making team, not about the abuse that a small num- ber of trolls were able to turn into a fire- storm.