NCAA pilot study finds widespread social media harassment of athletes, coaches and officials

AP Sports Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — An NCAA study on social media abuse of athletes, coaches and other officials during championship events found nearly one in five posts that were flagged by an AI-based algorithm and determined to be abusive involved sexual harassment and 12% were related to sports betting. The college athletics governing body’s findings of its first online harassment study using Signify Group’s Threat Matrix examined more than 72,000 messages flagged by an algorithm. Over 5,000 of those posts were confirmed to contain abusive, discriminatory or threatening content and were reported to social media companies. Results of the pilot study were released Thursday.