Pushing Limits
Aarhus University
Football and the Problem of Cyber-Racism: Investigating Football's Response View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Kilvington
Although English football has, to some extent, managed the problem of overt racism in and around live football matches, recent years have seen an increase of football related racist content published on social media. Kick It Out, English football’s main antiracism and discrimination organisation, identified 95,000 discriminatory posts directed at EPL teams, with approximately 39,000 such posts aimed at EPL players. This paper discusses what factors have caused and encouraged the growth of racism online. For example, the nature of communication will be examined as anonymity, invisibility and feelings of privacy work to encourage online hate-speech. The paper will then consider the changes within English football fandom and quantifiably illustrate that overt forms of racism on match-days appear to be decreasing every season. That said, overt forms of racism have by no means disappeared as arguably, social media, and in particular, Twitter, has provided a new platform to spread hate. With the aid of empirical work, I will critically assesses the response of English football’s institutions, organisations and clubs to the problem of racism on social media. The paper aims to highlight key research findings: there are a number of systematic failings undermining or hindering football’s attempts to address this issue including poor co-ordination, a lack of clear guidelines, ad hoc educational provision, a shortage of resources, and a culture of secrecy at many clubs. The paper closes with some recommendations about how these weaknesses may start to be improved and highlights areas for further research.
Autonomy, Sport, and Threat of Gender Violence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sylvia Burrow, Julie Baribault
Gender violence refers to a collection of harms and abuses enabled or sustained by systemic social practices, structures, and institutions and which target members of groups following gender lines inextricably linked to sexual orientation. Empirical studies are beginning to reveal sport participation as a place threatening gender violence outside the rules or conventions of play, including harassment and violence on the grounds of gender and sexual orientation. Within sport studies, attention to gender tends to focus on inequality and discrimination and less upon gender violence, while research on gender violence generally overlooks sport contexts, focussing primarily on threat of violence as fear and vigilance within rape culture. My analysis connects research on gender violence to sport contexts to reveal threat of violence as a serious constraint upon autonomy as options are either reduced or selectively navigated due to threat of harm. My account appeals to relational autonomy theory understanding autonomy as a site of development and progress influenced by and through our relations to others. On the relational view, autonomy is limited when social contexts undermine opportunities to cultivate and pursue options in practice. Through an examination of threat of violence within sport contexts, my analysis addresses harms to autonomy, drawing attention to limits and possibilities for developing and sustaining autonomy within contexts threatening violence. I maintain optimism that this investigation will illuminate compromised autonomy as a serious concern for those who aim to understand more deeply the effects of harmful sport contexts in the aim of countering associated harms.
