Racial Biases in Social Media Discussions About Soccer Players

Abstract

Recent reports suggest that Black soccer players are often subjected to racial abuse from fans in social media commentary. This study develops a pipeline to collect data from Reddit and Twitter during a four-season period spanning three soccer tournaments, linking posts with mentioned soccer players to investigate the prevalence of racial bias in these posts. Our results highlight subtle forms of racial disparity in social media comments about soccer players. Specifically, we find that Black players tend to receive more toxic comments than White players and that Black players receive more comments related to their physical attributes, in line with previous findings in traditional media coverage. We hope that our research and multiplatform social media datasets help raise awareness of subtle forms of racial disparities in the discussion of athletes and motivate further research to characterize racial bias in soccer.