Swansea And Rangers Announce Social Media Boycott To Highlight Online Abuse

A move by EFL Championship club Swansea City, who announced a week-long boycott of social media in response to online abuse, has seen other clubs and players respond.

Fellow Championship side Birmingham City and Scottish Premiership champions Rangers also announced a boycott of social media, while Jordan Henderson has partnered with anti-cyberbullying charity Cybersmiles. The Liverpool captain has teamed up with the charity on its People Not Profiles campaign, which aims to tackle abuse and support victims of online harassment.

Henderson will hand over his platform to the charity in a bid to raise awareness, stating that he seriously considered deleting his social media accounts, but instead says he will use his platform to ‘try and drive positive change’.

Swansea City, meanwhile, said it chose to take a ‘club-wide stance in the battle against abuse and discrimination of all forms on social media’ by announcing that all of its players across its men’s, women’s, and academy sides, as well as senior club staff and its official channels would stop posting content for seven days. 

The club also announced that CEO Julian Winter has sent a letter to Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook. The Swansea chief executive’s letter expresses the club’s ‘desire to see social media companies introduce more stringent policing and punishments for those guilty of the appalling and cowardly abuse that has sadly become far too common’.

In a statement, the club said: “As a football club, we have seen several of our players subjected to abhorrent abuse in the past seven weeks alone, and we feel it is right to take a stand against behaviour that is a blight on our sport, and society at large.

“We will always be unwavering in our support of our players, staff, supporters and the community that we proudly represent, and we are united as a club on this issue.

“We also want to stand with players from other clubs who have had to endure vile discrimination on social media platforms.

“As a club we are also acutely aware of how social media can impact on the mental health of players and staff, and we hope our strong stance will highlight the wider effects of abuse.”

Meanwhile, Rangers will take similar action, with players and club staff coming off social media for seven days to highlight the levels of abuse as well as a ‘lack of accountability and responsibility from social media outlets’.

Rangers’ Finnish player Glen Kamara recently revealed that he had received racial abuse every day following an incident against Slavia Prague in a  Europa League last 16 match. Slavia’s Ondrej Kundela was accused of racially abusing Kamara in the match, and is currently under investigation by UEFA over the incident.

Birmingham City said it ‘stands in solidarity’ with Swansea, and will also not post for a period of seven days.