The eSafety Commissioner has teamed up with some of the country’s major sporting organisations to address online abuse aimed at the nation’s athletes.
eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant said 24 sporting organisations had come together in the past week to discuss online abuse in sport and to sign the Online Safety Statement of Commitment.
Ms Inman Grant said the roundtable and Commitment came about in response to athletes and staff being increasingly subjected to high levels of serious online abuse, including racism, sexism and homophobia.
“Although sport in Australia is usually a powerful community builder, online interactions with athletes are not always positive,” she said.
“Where once fans were limited to yelling their encouragement or venting their frustrations from the stands or at their TVs; today social media allows people to anonymously communicate abuse directly to athletes.”
“This abuse can be unrelenting and is often personal in nature.”
Ms Inman Grant said that in recent times female athletes, those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and diverse cultural and multilingual backgrounds, were increasingly becoming the targets of “unimaginable online abuse, hatred, misogyny and racism”.
She said athletes were already under a tremendous amount of pressure to be at the top of their game.
“To then have to deal with serious and harmful online abuse can have devastating impacts on a person’s wellbeing and their sense of safety,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“Athletes are role models in our communities who are expected to be in the spotlight as part of their job and it’s important that we have policies and practices to protect them from the online abuse that is levelled at them.”
The Commissioner said that by signing the Online Safety Statement, sports organisations had committed to drive positive change and actively support the Commissioner’s work to keep people safe online; implement prevention strategies; have internal policies and processes in place to support athletes to report online abuse; support the Commissioner’s research agenda; and help promote the principles of online safety through social media channels and communications campaigns.
