Stan Collymore Highlights Racist Abuse Towards Footballers: Five Other Twitter Race Rows

Stan Collymore Highlights Race Abuse: Five Other Twitter Rows

Stan Collymore has highlighted examples of racism on Twitter, following an ongoing row about racism in football.

Offensive tweets swearing and threatening Patrice Evra, following the eight-match ban of Liverpool's Luis Suarez for racially abusing Manchester United's player use the word n****r and other racist insults.

Ex-Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has "favourited" the racist tweets to expose the abuse to users of the social networking site.

Stan Collymore and his followers are calling for Twitter to monitor the level of the racist abuse. "Have a look at my favourites. Tell me Twitter shouldn't do something" he wrote.

But it's not the first time that Twitter has been embroiled in a racism row. Police investigating racist abuse online have shown tweeters they aren't as anonymous as they think. Even if comments are deleted on Twitter, once the bird has flown the nest, it's not coming back.

In November 2011, Newcastle United footballer Sammy Ameobi was racially abused on Twitter. Although the offender's account was deleted after Ameobi highlighted the abuse, two 17-year-olds were arrested on suspicion of malicious communication by Northumbria Police.

Then, in the first ban of its kind, football fan Luke O'Donoughoe, 22 was was banned from Norwich City matches for life, and was investigated by police after allegedly posting racist comments on Twitter.

Manchester City footballer Micah Richards also suffered racist slurs over the net.

However it's not just footballers that experience racism on the net. Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati left Twitter in June after being bombarded with racist messages.

Should Twitter take action against these racist tweets? Twitter commented on the ongoing Stan Collymore racism storm, saying that tweeting racist abuse will always be taken extremely seriously.

Twitter have taken action to remove racist topics before now. When #thatsafrican began trending in June 2009, the topic was removed by the social networking site, in case it was used as a front for racist abuse.

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