Scale of online abuse in football revealed

 Football's anti-discrimination group Kick It Out have published research that shows the scale of online abuse of Premier League players and clubs this season. They found over 134,000 abusive tweets, posts and comments, of which 28% were racist and 9% were antisemitic.

The research covers the period from August 2014 to 2015 and was carried out by specialist social media analysts. They found that abusive and discriminatory content was directed particularly at high-profile teams and players, and was often connected to specific matches. As well as racist and antisemitic content, the research found that 25% of the tweets or posts referred to gender, 19% to sexual orientation, 11% to disability and 5% to Islamophobia.

You can read more about the research from Kick It Out here.