Social media companies have been warned by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom to step up measures to tackle online abuse after research revealed that some Premier League players are targeted with hateful posts every day.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire were the stars who received the most abuse, with the study showing that eight of the ten most abused players are from Manchester United. Other Premier League stars were also the victims of racist and homophobic posts.
Ofcom employed the Alan Turing Institute to monitor abuse of players on Twitter during the first half of last season and found more than 60,000 tweets were personal attacks that went beyond just criticism, including racist and homophobic abuse.
The findings showed that 418 of the 618 Premier League
