Hope not hate: England women football team enjoy positive social media posts

The vast majority of social media posts directed at England women’s triumphant Euro 2022 football players across a three-month period were positive, research has found.

The study of 78,141 posts on Twitter, Reddit and the imageboard website 4chan identified more than 50,000 positive posts – roughly one “hate” post for every 125 “hope” ones.

About 380 were classed as sexist or homophobic, while the rest were either negative or neutral.

Prof Matthew Williams, director of Cardiff University’s HateLab, which carried out the analysis, said: “Last year we saw horrendous racist abuse directed at individual players after England’s men’s team lost on penalties to Italy in the Euro 2020 final.

“In the women’s Euros, we found far fewer posts directed at individual England players, which is perhaps unexpected but may be reflective of the different audience for the game and positive sentiment around the team’s success.

“The nature of the 380 posts we identified was concerning, including attempts to scorn the success of women’s football, players being told in some of the less offensive posts to ‘get back to kitchen’ or to ‘make a sandwich’, and suggestions women should not be playing football. There were also grossly offensive posts that made sexual references. It is surprising that most of these posts remain live on the platforms.”

The study developed new algorithms to analyse thousands of English-language posts sent from 2 May-1 August.

Researchers found England players received 50,422 positive posts during the 13-week period. The largest number was during last month’s final against Germany, where England won 2-1 after extra time to lifttheir first major women’s tournament – and only the second in England’s history.

In total, 380