2024
Rethinking Online Fan Spaces
Social media spaces with billions of users have had widespread, long term side effects. This project reimagines online spaces by creating a dedicated space for one user group, in this case, the football community. The aim is to design a platform that allows users to engage in a more positive manner.
My Role
Product Design
Duration
8 Weeks
Background
System Thinking Course
INTRODUCTION
System complexity and social media
Social media is a very complex system, it consists of digital interactions from different ends of the world. It also has far reaching effects from affecting people on a personal level to affecting people on a larger collective scales such as countries and communities. It also influences the way people think when it comes to political, social or economic scenarios.
To analyze social media, I picked twitter. While twitter in itself is a complex system with hundreds of different communities on different scales, I decided to pick one specific community to further look into.
With this in mind, I chose football twitter. A community of football fans from all over the world boasting a user base of 191 million accounts on twitter.
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
Mapping relationships between different components
The following service blueprint of the Twitter platform maps out connections between user actions and processes that are seen and unseen to the user and the supporting processes.
ALGORITHM
Personal feed and communities on Twitter
The following flowchart explains how Tweets appear on peoples feeds and how communities are formed. Some of the biggest communities being, pop culture, news and football.
FOOTBALL COMMUNITY
How does the football community look like?
With the football community being one of the largest and with lot of prevalent issues within it, I decided to further study this specific community on Twitter and mapped the different groups in the community.
GAPS
Identifying gaps for intervention
— Online Harassment
Online harassment and abusive behavior are active issues present within the community on twitter. Current moderation system can take down offensive posts but no effective intervention is in place to prevent it being posted in the first place.
— Clickbait
More engagement on posts converts into an increase in followers and revenue on monetization. This encourages certain users to post false, misleading or controversial content in order to drive up engagement. This behavior is fueled by how twitter gives posts popularity.
— Anonymity/Accountability
While anonymity may be a good thing, it can also drive negative behavior. Since online interactions are between usernames and profile pictures, there is a lack of accountability. People can speak negatively against others without facing its repercussions.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Tracking abuse on Twitter against football players in the 2021 – 22 Premier League Season
This paper consists of the research done by the Alan Turing Institute who analyzed more than 2.3 million tweets directed at Premier League footballers over the first five months of the 2021-22 season. The Premier League is the top football league in England and watched globally.
“The majority of players received abuse at least once. 68% of players received at least one abusive tweet during the period (418/618). One in fourteen (7%) received abuse every day.” Abuse varies over time, with peaks following key events such as after a match.
“Of 44,907 users who sent at least one abusive tweet, 82.3% sent only one Abusive tweet.
"The other 17.7% sent more than one abusive tweet, accounting for 35% of all abuse (n = 7,948)”
CRITICAL
Critical tweets talk about player skills and attitude. This includes criticism and may or may not be aggressive.
VS
ABUSIVE
Abusive tweets contain insults, mocking comments or attacks a players identity.
Source: Vidgen, Bertie and Chung, Yi-Ling and Johansson, Pica and Kirk, Hannah Rose and Williams, Angus and Hale, Scott A. and Margetts, Helen Zerlina and Röttger, Paul and Sprejer, Laila, Tracking Abuse on Twitter Against Football Players in the 2021 – 22 Premier League Season (August 2, 2022). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4403913
LITERATURE REVIEW
Discrimination on football Twitter: the role of humour in the Othering of minorities
What is othering?
Othering is a way of negating another person's individual humanity and, consequently, those that are have been othered are seen as less worthy of dignity and respect. It creates distance between different groups.
This paper studies the concept of ‘othering’ in the football twitter community and how it is often concealed with humor.
This is done through the use of gifs and making crude comments. Comments and jokes against teams trying to be inclusive of the LGBT community and racist posts against players are some of the ways a divide is created.
This is important to understand because this type of discrimination is hard to flag because there are no keywords used which can flag the post.
“Twitter might need to revisit the default right to anonymity that so many racist and homophobic users hide behind”
Source: Eleanore Glynn & David H. K. Brown (2023) Discrimination on football Twitter: the role of humour in the Othering of minorities, Sport in Society, 26:8, 1432-1454, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2022.2144726
CASE STUDY
English football announces social media boycott, 2021
The boycott shows English football coming together to emphasise that social media companies must do more to eradicate online hate.
English football outlined its requests of social media companies, urging filtering, blocking and swift takedowns of offensive posts, an improved verification process and re-registration prevention.
"The Premier League and our clubs stand alongside football in staging this boycott to highlight the urgent need for social media companies to do more in eliminating racial hatred. We will not stop challenging social media companies and want to see significant improvements in their policies and processes to tackle online discriminatory abuse on their platforms.”
MAPPING
System Mapping
Below is a map of all the different aspects relating to football communities online and how they are connected to both the digital and physical space.
Link for better viewing: https://embed.kumu.io/1cc0594f93afd2c7050f23b8e3085a83
PRIMARY RESEARCH
Insights from netnography on Twitter
Within the community, there are certain influential fan accounts with large number of followers.
Fans of rival teams keep commenting on each others posts mocking either the player or team performance.
When official accounts like the Premier League (England's top league) post about social issues like supporting the LGBT community there are homophobic comments from some fans such as “disgusting” and “going to stop watching”.
Professional players do see the negative comments and sometimes speak out on the situation. Certain players have even shared screenshots of death threats they received, pleading fans to be respectful and civil.
Trending topics are formed around current live matches, player performances, transfer new or scandals/controversies.
Trolling is common and provokes reactions for better engagement
HOW MIGHT WE
Identifying leverage points and defining How Might We (HMW) statements
Leverage points are the places to intervene in a system to bring about change.
For footballing communities online, external regulation can be a leverage point by bringing accountability to people.
Within the scope of this project, design changes to the current structure of social media may create a more civil social space.
Based on the findings, “how might we” statements are formed to create opportunities for generating solutions:
How might we design social media to facilitate civil conversations?
How might we create better accountability?
How might we connect rather than divide?
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Structure for an app catered to a specific community
PLATFORM DESIGN
Benefits of a dedicated prosocial space for the football community
More focused moderation since it is only focused on one community.
Better interactions between fans, clubs, players and all other members.
More targeted and relevant content.
Possible to accommodate different groups and have community specific features present.
User verification types
Specific verification types to identify legitimate accounts and avoiding impersonation. Verification cannot be bought but will be validated by a team.
A platform for fans to engage in civil discussions
Thank you for reading.