Cricket tests Social Media Monitoring Pilot Cricket has conducted a pilot on the monitoring of social media and discovered that almost one in five of the comments made on a player or team’s social media account are abusive or spam. Running the program with its recently concluded ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in the UAE, the ICC made use of an AI tool developed by the tech company GoBubble to fend off abuses online. It scanned more than 1.4 million comments on 60 player accounts and 8 team accounts. There were more than 270,000 instances of racism, sexism, homophobia and other types of harassment.
Protecting the Women Players
The initiative was part of the overall effort by the ICC towards making the playing environment safe for women, especially as growing attention is being taken for women’s games.
The service was used through the accounts of those players and teams who are opting into a new service launched to address growing concerns about online abuse, particularly against female athletes.
The case of online abuse, targeting female players and their spouses, has increased manifold. Certain instances have been stated to cause grave mental health issues. In that regard, the attempt made by the ICC will make social media a comfortable platform for the cricketers. Considering the growth of the game among women, new teams’ establishment, more matches and dedicated league window, light on and pressure on women cricket will be there.
Working of AI Tool
GoBubble AI tool: There are two major functions that the GoBubble AI tool has. It can detect nasty talk across any language, filter itself to single players or teams, as well as identify bots posting unrelated content. This helps stop abusive comments from being posted and also removes unwanted promotional posts, such as cryptocurrency adverts on player pages. It also means that the tool can be customized, so particular instances of historic abuse directed towards certain players can be proactively filtered out.
Player Advocacy for the Initiative
South African wicketkeeper-batter Sinalo Jafta, one of the players who have voiced their experience with online abuse, has been a strong advocate for the initiative. Prior to the tool, Jafta would rely on a friend or family member to monitor her social media accounts, deleting everything harmful that is posted. It allows players like Jafta to engage their fans online while being protected from different hostile content.
Positive Engagement in Social Media
The aim of the programme is to empower cricketers to freely share their personal experiences and stories with their followers without yet another burden of online harassment. ICC expects that this might encourage more players to embrace social media as a tool to connect with fans, especially because positive social media engagement may help the players have a more intimate relationship with the next generation of fans.
Future Plans
Current Expansions are only up to the end of 2025 that offers the service only to women players. It has already been planned to establish a similar version for male players if the demand is quite high. Then, the ICC will decide on whether it has really worked, gauging the feedback from the players and the impacts of social media interactions before further expansion takes place.
The Sportz Planet Desk,
Atharva Shetye
