Dismantling Hate: Understanding Hate Speech Trends Against NBA Athletes

Social media has emerged as a popular platform for sports fans to express their opinions regarding athletes' performance. Fans consistently hold high expectations for athletes, anticipating exceptional performances week after week. This ongoing phenomenon sometimes gives rise to highly negative sentiments, with the worst-case scenario involving the occurrence of hate speech. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is widely recognized as one of the most popular sports leagues globally. However, an unfortunate aspect that has emerged in recent years is the presence of abusive fans within the league. Consequently, the focus of this research is to identify which NBA athletes experience abuse on Twitter and delve deeper into the underlying reasons behind such mistreatment. To address the research questions at hand, the study employs a curated set of keywords to query the Twitter API, gathering a comprehensive collection of tweets that potentially contain hate speech directed toward NBA players. A deep learning classification model is implemented, effectively identifying tweets that genuinely exhibit hate speech. We further use keyword search methods to detect the specific groups that are targeted by hate speech the most and identify topics of hate speech tweets. The findings of our research indicate that certain groups of athletes are particularly vulnerable to hate speech from fans. Racism, physique shaming, play style, and anti-LGBTQ remarks are the major themes. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of the challenges faced by NBA athletes in the digital space and provide a foundation for developing strategies to combat hate speech and foster a more inclusive environment for all individuals involved in the NBA community.