Hear from Kimberley Wyllie, one of our talented UAOA Scholars currently undertaking research into how witnessing or experiencing online abuse impacts the identities of female motorsport fans and how they engage with the sport.
Our identity is crucial to who we are as a person. Without it everyone would just be carbon copies of one another. But who we are can change depending on who we’re with. You’re not the same with family as you are with friends, and you’re a different person again at work, and you’re probably a different person again when you’re with people you don’t know. With these changes in our social identity come differences in our actions and behaviours too.
These behaviour changes are also notable online too. Comments that a person may never verbalise in person can suddenly flow from their keyboard when they see something online they disagree with. Online abuse in the motorsport community can impact fans, teams, organisations, officials, governing bodies, competitors, and the media. Online abuse can travel across social media platforms and spiral as information is misinterpreted and misshared.
While the current academic literature helps us to understand female fans and their experiences of sexism and misogyny in sport, there is a gap to explore these experiences from an online perspective. Media commentary and coverage show a push to make motorsport more inclusive to female fans, yet these comment sections can be filled with less than inclusive comments. Many of these comments, which are at their core abusive, sexist, and misogynistic, are overlooked as such because they appear so often or they are disguised as a joke. The normalisation of covert online abuse would be dangerous for fans and their wellbeing, but also for the growth of sport.
Why do I care? I care because nobody should have to pretend they don’t like something, or feel they can’t celebrate their hobby, or be someone they’re not because somebody else behind a keyboard told them so. As a female motorsport fan I feel I shouldn’t have to compromise on an aspect of my identity to fit a mould and feel safe online. Neither should anybody else. It’s time that our experiences were spoken about, recognised, and acted upon.
My research focuses on understanding how witnessing or experiencing online abuse shapes female motorsport fans identities and their engagement with the sport. It’s a piece of work which focuses on defining how people categorise comments, discussing the emotive reactions these can evoke. While also trying to help us understand how female fans engage with motorsport online and where they feel most at risk of harm from online abuse.
The research itself is of a mixed methodology approach. A baseline survey is being used to provide information on social media usage, fan identification, and experiences of online abuse. From this we are inviting participants to small focus groups to further explore their experiences of online abuse, how they view their place in the motorsport community, and what changes they’d like to see.
Participant recruitment is currently underway and we’re keen to reach as many eligible participants as possible. To be eligible to participate, you must:
- Be aged 18 years or over
- Be living in the United Kingdom
- Identify as female (transgender/cisgender/gender diverse)
- Identify as a motorsport fan
For further information, and to participate, please use the following link: Research Project. The survey should take no longer than 20 minutes to complete.
Get in touch with Kimberley via LinkedIn or Email.
The United Against Online Abuse (UAOA) Scholarship Programme was created to empower the next generation of researchers in the fight against online abuse in sport. Launched in 2023, funded by the FIA Foundation and delivered at Dublin City University, you can find out more about the programme here.
