Offensive messages and Twitter trolling during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Peter English; Asta Zelenkauskaite; Rory Mulcahy; David Fleischman

doi:10.1080/14660970.2025.2515893

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Offensive messages and Twitter trolling during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Offensive messages and Twitter trolling during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Peter English, Asta Zelenkauskaite, Rory Mulcahy and David Fleischman

Soccer and Society, Vol.26(6), pp.917-933

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2025.2515893

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Abstract

Female athletes have often been the targets of offensive comments on digital platforms and incivility, trolling and hate speech were again present during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. In this sometimes-toxic environment, it is important to understand what is occurring during such a prestigious global tournament so organizations and platforms recognize the degree of abuse – and consider how to address it. In this study, Twitter posts (n = 294,785) were examined in a quantitative content analysis for swearing, rude and derogatory words, and manually filtered into 700 cases where offensive comments were evident. The findings outline types and topics of trolling and highlight how these elements were expressed during the 2023 World Cup, with females the main targets, often by male perpetrators. Broader implications of this work show the need to find ways to address hostility online towards women in sport.

Details

Title: Offensive messages and Twitter trolling during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup
Authors: Peter English (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Asta Zelenkauskaite - Drexel University
Rory Mulcahy - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
David Fleischman - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Publication details: Soccer and Society, Vol.26(6), pp.917-933
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2025.2515893
ISSN: 1743-9590
Copyright note: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991135805202621
Output Type: Journal article

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