Harry Kane was essentially the most abused England participant on Twitter through the World Cup group levels, accounting for practically three out of 10 destructive tweets directed at staff members.

England gamers have been despatched 1,546 abusive tweets through the group levels of the World Cup, based on evaluation by the Alan Turing Institute, accounting for two% of the greater than 75,000 tweets mentioning gamers for the nationwide staff.

The institute’s on-line security staff discovered that 13% of these abusive tweets – or 205 posts – contained key phrases that referred to a protected attribute equivalent to race, gender or sexuality.

The England captain obtained essentially the most abusive posts, being tagged in 426 abusive tweets that made up 28% of the overall of destructive posts despatched to gamers’ Twitter handles throughout England’s three group video games.

Anger on the choice that Kane ought to to not put on a OneLove armband was a frequent theme within the abuse content material directed at him through the 6-2 win over Iran, the institute mentioned. The subsequent most abused gamers through the group levels have been Mason Mount and Harry Maguire, receiving 167 and 152 abusive tweets respectively.

Hannah Kirk, a researcher on the institute, mentioned abusive tweets correlated with moments when “the stakes are excessive”, which may affect the web behaviour of followers as England progress by the match.

“Dissatisfied followers are more likely to cross the road from criticism to abuse when the stakes are excessive and feelings are operating excessive,” mentioned Kirk. “As we transfer to the knockout levels, perhaps we’ll see that form of rage pitched at England gamers, relying on the scorelines and the way they’re progressing by the match.”

Referring to the Kane abuse, she mentioned: “It may be one thing to do with him taking a much bigger brunt of the abuse in his position as captain, like bearing the burden of the staff and the way they’re acting on the pitch.”

Unfavorable tweets directed at England gamers reached a peak through the 0-0 draw with the USA, based on the evaluation by the institute, which is the nationwide institute for knowledge science and synthetic intelligence. Practically 5% of tweets despatched through the match have been abusive, in contrast with 1.5% for the video games in opposition to Iran and Wales.

The Chelsea midfielder Mount was essentially the most closely focused participant through the USA match, through which England’s efficiency was extensively criticised, together with his Twitter deal with accounting for multiple in 10 of the destructive tweets.

Marcus Rashford obtained essentially the most destructive tweets through the 3-0 victory over Wales, regardless of his excellent efficiency within the sport, though he obtained a relatively low variety of derogatory messages – 39 – out of the practically 5,000 that he obtained through the sport.

The research outlined an abusive tweet as a message that tags a participant’s Twitter deal with and threatens, insults, derogates, dehumanises, mocks or belittles a participant, together with with slurs and destructive stereotypes, in addition to extreme use of profanities.

The evaluation by the institute’s on-line harms observatory, utilizing an AI mannequin, follows a research by the identical staff into Twitter abuse of Premier League gamers revealed in August. Regardless of fears of a rise in hate speech on Twitter within the wake of Elon Musk shopping for the platform in October, the World Cup evaluation confirmed a detailed correlation with the Premier League analysis, which seemed on the first half of the 2021-22 season, with 2.6% of the Premier League tweets being abusive, in contrast with 2% within the World Cup.

Within the Premier League research, the highest 10 of abused gamers was dominated by members of the Manchester United squad, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Maguire first and second respectively. Tottenham’s Kane was fifth.