There has been much discussion lately about racial abuse towards footballers on social media, and even the great Arsenal legend Ian Wright has spoken out this week about the lack of punishment for abusers, even when the perpetrator was taken to court.
Mikel Arteta has made it clear that the victims of the abuse can be seriously affected mentally, as Arsenal fans have even been guilty of towards Granit Xhaka, Shkodran Mustafi in the past, and the Iceland international Alex Runarsson had to delete his Twitter acount just a few weeks ago after he was attacked by Arsenal fans after the Man City cup game.
Arteta made his stance clear when he told Arsenal.com in his press conference: “There are all types of different abuses and I think it has to be eradicated completely. I think social media has a big responsibility on that, because then you talk about the mental health of the players and the public and how exposed they are.
“I am all open and I’m for people to have their opinions, but not just to be insulting people, abusing people and using a screen on somebody’s mobile phone to tell them whatever you want, to a person that you don’t even know. That for me has to be eradicated, because it is causing a lot of damage in football and a lot of damage to public people. So I think we have to be really strong on that and I think you guys [the media] as well have a big part to play to support us and the industry here.”
It is certainly not going to be easy to eradicate, unless you have hundreds of monitors working 24 hours a day to weed out the guilty parties, but I’m sure if there were more people getting charged and punished, then others would very quickly get the message.
How do you think is the best way we could eradicate all types of abuse on social media?