#KlickItOut aims to combat social media abuse in football

Kick It Out have launched a new campaign, called #KlickItOut, in an effort to raise awareness of football-related social media discrimination.

The goal of the campaign is to encourage football fans to end social media abuse and promote equality and inclusion across all online channels.

At present incidents of discrimination and abuse on social media don’t currently fall under any football regulation, which has left the organisation with a difficult challenge of reporting on such occurrences.

Findings reported on last year revealed that between August 2014 and March 2015 there were 551 football-related discriminatory posts on social media every day. As a result of the investigation a social media expert group was established consisting of staff from the FA, Premier League, PFA, Football League, Twitter, Facebook, the Government, selected social media experts, and Kick It Out themselves.

Throughout the upcoming Euro 2016 they will therefore be working alongside analytics company Brandwatch to monitor online abuse towards players to further investigate the issue.

Kick It Out’s director Roisin Wood said:

“We want this campaign to illustrate the level of discrimination that still occurs on social media that is a stain on football.

“At Kick It Out we don’t have the power to change laws but we hope our campaign shows how serious the problem is and the devastating impact it can have on people. This problem needs to be addressed now.”

Kick It Out are encouraging supporters to include the #KlickItOut hashtag when talking about the campaign, and to show their backing by sharing the “we need #KlickItOut” message on social media.

More information can be found on the Klick It Out microsite.