Not Just Trolls: The Experiences and Effects of Online Harm on Elite Women’s Sport Athletes

Experiencing Online Harm

In this section, we document a range of online harms experienced by our study participants (Figure 1), centring athletes’ everyday realities as the basis of knowledge (Jaggar & Bordo, 1989). Consistent with types of gender-based commentary previously identified on social media that objectify athletes and undermine their capabilities through sexualised language and gender role stereotypes (Krieger et al., 2022; McCarthy, 2022) participants noted receiving comments such as “juniors can kick further”, “go home and wash the dishes and raise a child”, and “Trashy whore”. Athletes described being attacked online about their appearance, noting “body shaming” accusations such as “uniform dresses being too short, showing too much, not for [their] body type, not attractive” (survey respondent, 18–25 year-old netballer), through to death threats and violent messages such as “kill yourself”, “wishing cancer for both you and your family” and being “told that I deserved to be physically abused by my ex”, confirming findings documented elsewhere (Kavanagh et al., 2019). Survey data identifies the presence of homophobia and racism towards women athletes in online forums, with one in five athletes experiencing racism and one in four homophobia in addition to gender-based harassment, adding weight to industry reporting that queer and racialised women are disproportionately targeted (Signify, 2023).OPEN IN VIEWER

Participants expressed a desire to make known the extent of the problem, which went far beyond gender-based insults and threats on social media, raising many instances of gendered online abuse that are less documented in studies of athlete cyberharm because they cannot be detected through secondary data collection and analysis methods (Kearns et al., 2023). Anna described “getting hacked a lot”, raising fears for her security. Direct messaging (DM), which allows messages to be sent privately to public social media accounts, was mentioned by participants as a platform feature that enabled threatening sexual contact (Kavanagh et al., 2019). For instance, a survey respondent (26–35 year-old golfer) disclosed “I have had a man stalking me for the last 6 years. Frequently get sent disgusting messages and photos sent to me via direct message. Have had photos of myself sent around my peers”. Interviewee Camila, when playing in an international soccer league, described how she was stalked online by a coach who made his presence felt by tagging her in online comments and posts, which may look benign to outside observers but made her feel deeply uncomfortable. Camila experienced his constant online presence as a form of intimidation.

The DM feature and video conferencing tools were also identified by study participants as a way they received unwanted sexually explicit images. For instance, Camila elaborated on the behaviour of the coach who sent “obscene semi-nude photos of himself to one of my teammates. He also exposed himself to her during a Zoom call”, also noting “two of the younger girls in the in the group, received these kind of messages, explicit photos and videos… pornographic content.” Izzy, a former professional swimmer, spoke about being subject to image-based abuse “...a certain individual would constantly message me. He actually got hold of my mobile number somehow and silly me when I was young, when I really didn’t realise what social media platforms could do and he was requesting nude images.” In her study of the social media use of women Olympians Guerin (2017) notes “unwanted direct messages” as a challenge raised by these athletes. The experiences recounted by athletes in this study go further by demonstrating that unwanted DMs can constitute a form of gender-based violence (Kavanagh et al., 2019). Camila and Izzy’s comments highlight how athletes’ experiences of gender-based violence are occurring on a wider array of platforms and apps than indicated in the existing literature, where the predominant focus is on social media platforms as facilitating online abuse.

Another type of online harm that was raised in interviews was neither sexual nor explicit but involved athletes being misrepresented in online communications intended to promote women’s sport, including the official accounts of sport clubs. These were distinct from hostile comments of online trolls undermining women’s sport (McCarthy, 2022) and examples of technology facilitated gender-based violence as discussed by Camila and Izzy. Emma, a former Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) player, described the reputational damage she experienced when her own club’s media unit posted on their official social media account that she had been dropped from the squad, despite leaving football to pursue another career: “...I didn’t get dropped. I stepped down and I’m not playing football at all anymore. So that was like a really upsetting experience”. Emma’s recollection offers an example of how digital technologies used in work settings can undermine athletes through inaccuracies and mischaracterisation and deny them agency in crafting their sporting identity. This matters in a media context where athletes competing in women’s sport are routinely misrepresented and suggests that social media can be used to perpetuate these harms (Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2018), rather than grant athletes greater control of their image. Such harms often go unrecognised because they do not meet the threshold of online abuse as defined by law enforcement agencies and digital platforms, hence cannot be reported through these channels.

To date, there has been limited documented evidence of hacking, stalking, image-based abuse and private messaging used to harm athletes. Extending on existing studies that focus on social media platforms as the site for these forms of violence (Guerin, 2017; Kavasoğlu et al., 2023; Pocock & Skey, 2022), our findings show how they are perpetuated by workplace technologies such as official social media accounts, videoconferencing tools and group messaging platforms. Our participants’ lived experiences, as recounted through disclosures of virtual sexual violence, harassment and misrepresentation, indicates that these are forms of gender-based workplace harm. The occurrence of online harms while athletes are at work indicates a need to strengthen organisational understanding of diverse forms of online harm. Recommendations from other workplace contexts including politics (McGrane, 2022), journalism (Posetti & Shabbir, 2022) and academia (Kavanagh & Brown, 2020) highlight the holistic, preventative, multifactorial responses required to address gendered online harms in the workplace. Posetti and Shabbir (2022) segment their recommendations to various stakeholders—a similar approach to women’s sport would help ensure effective athlete safeguarding. As evidence about athlete experiences of online harm is still emerging, we outline in the conclusion how further research could take up workers’ rights approaches in sports contexts. In the remaining sections we explore athletes’ responses to these harms, noting their embodied, felt and material consequences.

Reporting and Responding to Online Harm

A key area of concern for athletes was around reporting online harm. Participants cited a lack of follow-up and accountability that made them feel frustrated and unheard. For interviewee Anna, who was worried about being identifiable because her sport has a small cohort of participants, she had made several reports about online harm after experiencing multiple incidents. As she recalls, “I nearly got in contact with the police at one stage ‘cause I was getting hacked a lot… I also had to change my account, so I’ve reported to [the Office of the] eSafety [Commissioner]”. While Anna found formal reporting mechanisms through Australia’s eSafety Commissioner accessible, the advice she received focused on how she could change her own behaviour to stop privacy breaches. Such advice, while useful with respect to addressing the harm currently taking place, can do little to prevent harm or change social attitudes towards women’s sport. Moreover, reporting online harm puts the onus on athletes to respond appropriately to harm, who risk facing stigma for making ‘bad’ online choices, rather than offering interventions targeting perpetrators to stop them from harming women online (Cole, 2015).

Many athletes felt strongly about wanting to respond publicly to harmful online posts that perpetuated social division along the lines of sexism, racism, homophobia and ableism. Yet participants like former rugby player Sarah were constrained in their advocacy efforts by organisational policy, having been told in social media training “don’t be controversial … if you do wanna make a statement about something, put it through the social media team. We can help you say what you want to say without being too offensive without putting sponsors offside”. Social media training directed at athletes to minimise engagement can perpetuate the censoring and silencing of women and minority groups in digital publics and leave uncontested damaging social stereotypes (Ging & Siapera, 2018). Athletes told us that being advised to mute, filter, block or delete harmful content was unhelpful as it fails to recognise the privileging of organisational power, whose interests are aligned with upholding white, patriarchal and corporate privilege in sport, over the alternative knowledges produced by athletes’ through their everyday experiences of injustice in sport (Pavlidis et al., 2025). Participant Sarah expressed their frustration in the face of organisational silencing by asking “why do we as the athletes or the people on the receiving end, why do I have to be the bigger person?” The strategy of online self-censorship observed in other studies (Phipps, 2022; Rahikainen & Toffoletti, 2022) was rejected by several of our participants, who were instead looking for their employer to better support them in speaking out publicly in digital spaces.

At the same time, some athletes told us their club or league was responsive to their reports of online harm. One anonymous survey respondent said, “The governing body of our sport takes care of the harassment made by these people and works out who they are or if they are fake accounts to proceed with police”. These instances are encouraging and demonstrate that some sporting clubs or organisations have created environments where reporting is supported. However, not all athletes may feel safe reporting to their sport integrity unit or police. Given the history of policing black and brown bodies in sport (Lichfield et al., 2018) reporting environments may not feel safe for athletes who are culturally and racially marginalised, and/or have experienced backlash from calling out racism: “Myself and teammates stood up to racism and sexism at our club expecting a change … some of the girls received more personal threats and even someone from the club’s public NYE message mentioned one of the girls by name in a negative way” (survey respondent aged 26–35, AFL and Soccer). In calling out racism and sexism online, First Nations players and allies resist organisational silencing (Pavlidis et al., 2025) and expose the limits of sports organisational knowledge about the harms of racism and sexism to athletes. The club’s negative response to player resistance online indicates an inability to register distinct experiences of discrimination at the intersections of race and gender, creating emotional and bodily responses such as fear and uncertainty for racialised athletes in predominantly white elite sport environments. Unfortunately, our research suggests that positive reporting experiences are the minority and are dependent on individual sports having policies, budget and resources to address complaints, as well as leadership that acknowledges different ways of being and experiencing the world (Barbour, 2018; Jaggar & Bordo, 1989).

Participants expressed concern over a lack of accountability or action after reporting, which made them feel disillusioned and that process of reporting was futile because “you won’t get anywhere with it” (Anna). Former AFLW player Emma said, “I just find it really frustrating that there’s no accountability or regulation with those comments like I know isn’t online bullying illegal?… I think it’s meant to be illegal, but I mean who’s regulating that? It’s just ridiculous.” For Emma, the supposed illegality of online harassment ¹ made her feel frustrated when reports were not dealt with appropriately. However, as scholars have identified, seeking legal recourse to online harm is incredibly challenging given the tensions between corporate power and government regulation (Powell & Henry, 2017; Smith et al., 2024).

Indeed, the tension between corporations, governments and social norms was highlighted by interviewee Sarah who said,

There’s been a number of times that I’ve reported people for comments. And the comment either gets taken down or they say ‘ohh, it actually hasn’t violated any of our community standards’. And so that comment is allowed to stand. But I just get to report the comment, I don't actually get an opportunity to say why I feel like it didn't make the standards.

Sarah’s quote draws attention to the ways in which online harms are embodied—in this case a lack of transparency in reporting mechanisms resulting in athletes feeling disempowered by the process and like their experiences were being dismissed and ignored. As feminist scholar Sara Ahmed (2021) writes on complaint, to complain is to be perceived as a nuisance and a cause of problems. We can extend this conceptualisation to reporting online harm to social media platforms because the platform becomes the arbiter of harm, not the person to whom the harm was done, which denies the embodied knowledge of lived experience and renders the complaint unacknowledged. For Emma, Sarah and other women’s sport athletes, reporting mechanisms do not ipso facto result in a measurable improvement in safety or wellbeing. Our survey results support this finding, with 80% of respondents noting that they did not feel any safer after reporting (Toffoletti et al., 2024).

Participants in the survey were asked about their knowledge of where to report gendered online harm and their likelihood to disclose. Athletes identified a range of reporting pathways, as shown in Figure 2, however approximately a quarter of respondents did not know where to report or would not report, which suggests that complaint processes both inside sporting bodies and through authorities can be improved. Regardless of the outcome of reporting—or not—athletes reported a fear of stigma and a lack of support after making a complaint about online harm.OPEN IN VIEWER

Support

Athletes described feeling embarrassed, unsupported and alone when experiencing online harm. Over half of survey participants (53%) who experienced online gendered harm stated that they did not seek support. By support, we are referring to formal and informal networks or resources including friends and family, sporting organisations or governing bodies. Seeking support after experiencing online harm can be a complex and fraught process, especially in a context where, as outlined above, reporting harm can feel disempowering (Veletsianos et al., 2018). Of the survey participants who did seek support, athletes were most likely to turn to a friend or family member or a fellow athlete. Figure 3 indicates the support sought by survey participants who experienced online gendered harm.OPEN IN VIEWER

While some athletes described being supported by their clubs or governing sporting organisations when reporting harm, others reported that the harm was done to them by their clubs, meaning they couldn’t safely or easily access supports or make a complaint. For instance, former AFLW player Becky said the lack of support during her experience of being delisted made her feel embarrassed and isolated. After the public announcement on social media, “[her] phone had blown up with notifications” and the only support she received was a text from the club’s wellbeing officer asking, “how are you going?” Becky’s experience highlights how clubs have a responsibility to support current and former players when their name and image are being shared publicly.

Access to athlete-specific supports at a sporting organisational level highlights the uneven terrain of funding for women’s sport, and speaks to broader tropes around the perceived (il)legitimacy of women’s sport. Athletes reported difficulties accessing appropriate and effective support without buy-in from social media platforms. For instance, professional soccer player Camila said,

The [players’ association] does what they can. But I think until the social media platform is also doing something to protect especially public figures better, I think it’s gonna be difficult for player associations really to do anything on their own. And even the leagues..., I think there’s a few that have started to filter comments and things like that on their posts. But that’s not everyone.

The differential approaches to addressing online harm within sporting governance bodies as well as uneven availability of funding in women’s sport can mean that some athletes are better supported than others. This was highlighted by participant Anna who said “because I’m in a non-Olympic sport. I’m actually not eligible for a lot of the governing services”. Athletes described feeling let down by inadequate planning as women’s sport rapidly expands. As Emma put it, “I think because the system is growing so fast, a lot of people have been left or fell through the cracks of these negative experiences and have had to deal with it themselves”.

As athletes move through the sport ecosystem, the lack of support some athletes experience from official channels highlights the importance of informal networks. For instance, rugby player Sarah said “there’s been times where I’ve talked to players from within my own team as a coach that have potentially been on the receiving end. So I’ve been a sounding board for them”. For swimmer Izzy, who felt supported by her colleagues in the aftermath of online harm, it was the strength of her network that made stability and safety possible. As she said, “I think [being so supported] came down again to the long-standing relationships with people, everybody knew me [where I trained]”. Having the opportunities to build and maintain connections across time as an athlete can be critical to feeling supported.

These findings suggest that organisations need to do more to support athletes experiencing online harm. Not all sports have the finances and resources to tackle this issue, so it is imperative that sport bodies work collectively to ensure that athletes from across all women’s competitions have equal access to supports and protections. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution and athletes would benefit from being offered a range of supports. Not all athletes receive comparable investment in their safety and wellbeing from their organisation, league or club, so the sport sector must work collaboratively and collectively to address this issue.

Impact

The impacts of online harm extended to athletes’ online behaviour, economic opportunities, athletic performance and wellbeing, with their responses indicating that these harms are embodied, material and affective. Participants noted how online abuse changed their online activities. While 53% of survey participants brushed it off or used personal strategies to deal with online harm (for instance, taking breaks from social media), others (47%) changed their online behaviour by closing social media accounts, avoiding certain platforms, posting less frequently, censoring their posts and avoiding some topics to minimise backlash. These actions demonstrate an embodied response to online harm in that both survey respondents and interview participants described diminishing their participation in the online public sphere following online harm. As Anna describes, the negative comments and judgements she received on her posts made her increasingly “hesitant to share things” on social media, leading her to drastically limit her social media profile and engagement: “I used to have an athlete specific account...but I no longer have an athlete account whatsoever. It’s only personal and it’s set to private”. Athletes self-censored their speech and removed themselves from online space as a result of feeling threatened simply for playing women’s sport in public. More than adaptive responses to online sexism (Kavasoğlu et al., 2023; Pocock & Skey, 2022; Rahikainen & Toffoletti, 2022), these techniques of self-surveillance have gendered effects, working alongside patriarchal surveillance of women’s appearance and actions in online spaces to regulate women’s online presence (Gill, 2019).

Curtailing online engagement and visibility in response to online harassment has economic and therefore material impacts for those competing in women’s sport. For Anna, who described using social media to “promote the things that I do in sport” and for “fundraising”, the harms she experienced online made her “more reluctant to doing that”. In Anna’s case, the embodied effects of online harm are felt as a limited capacity to promote women’s sport events and raise funds to compete. Without protections to ensure athletes can engage safely in online spaces, digital media environments risk exacerbating sport’s gender inequalities. Being unable to access appropriate funding can be considered a continuation of the “economic vandalism” that aims to curtail women’s economic achievements in precarious workplace contexts (Jane, 2018).

The effects of online harm on employment and economic opportunities for women’s sport athletes are echoed in the survey findings. For participants who both experienced and witnessed online harassment, they believed it to have the greatest impact on their employment, sponsorship and economic opportunities −45% (see Figure 4). Athletes who participate in an individual sport were twice as likely to state that online harassment affected (a “great deal” or “a lot”) their employment, sponsorship or economic opportunities (40%) as compared with athletes who participated in team sports (21%). The results indicated that athletes who participated in sports historically coded masculine (e.g. AFL, rugby, golf, cricket) overall were more likely to cite a substantial impact (a “great deal”) of the online harm to their wellbeing, athletic performance and economic opportunities as compared with athletes who participated in sports like netball, cheerleading and gymnastics, historically coded as feminine.OPEN IN VIEWER

The majority (77%) of survey participants who experienced online harm reported that it impacted their athletic performance (Figure 4), and 71% of participants who witnessed online harm, but were not targeted personally, also stated that it impacted their athletic performance. Negative online encounters moved participants into a state of physical hypervigilance and awareness of their actions that affected their performance in training and competition. As noted by Anna “I’ve been reluctant to actually compete further and train” as a result of scrutiny on social media after events, contributing to “a loss of confidence” and feelings of “embarrassment” about her abilities. Fear of being attacked in online comments for their on-field actions and appearance can stifle athletes’ ability to be ‘in the moment’ and unselfconsciously move one’s body while competing. These accounts suggest that for athletes competing in women’s sport, their bodies absorb the hurt of online harm, which carries across to their physical performance. Any hesitancy in women’s “manner of moving”, as Young (1980, p. 139) argues, is not a limitation of biology or anatomy, but results from gender norms and surveillance that make women self-conscious about moving their bodies, therefore restricting women’s corporeal capacity and freedom. Diminished performance due to gendered public scrutiny of their bodies indicates that mind and body cannot be separated as athletes come to internalise gendered discourses and organisational structures that position them as inferior (Pavlidis et al., 2025; Young, 1980). As the survey results show, impacts on performance were evident mainly for athletes competing in historically masculine coded sports (see Figure 4) where women’s bodies have been conceptualised as “women first, athlete second”, reinforcing the gendered inequality of public conceptions of women’s sport (Krieger et al., 2022).

Overall, exposure to online harms took a toll on the vast majority of survey respondents, with 95% of athletes who experienced it stating their wellbeing was impacted. As stated by Anna “My physical or mental health declined a lot from it”. Further, Izzy’s reflections indicate that athletes may carry the effects of online harms for many years, as she referred to the ongoing “shame” associated with having been subject to image-based abuse as a young athlete: “I was saying to my colleague this morning … I was actually having this interview and I was a bit panicky about it”.