THE IRFU IS expected to make official complaints over three social media accounts believed to be based in Ireland and linked to the racist abuse of rugby player Edwin Edogbo last month.  

The 42 FM – a podcast from The Journal and The 42 – has learned that early investigations indicate that one of the account holders may be a member of a rugby club in Ireland. 

Discussions with An Garda Síochána over the online activity about Edogbo have already started with a formal complaint process expected to get under way this week. 

The 23-year-old Cobh man was targeted across a number of social media platforms after his Ireland debut in the Six Nations on 14 February. The union had to close the commenting facility on a number of its posts following the team’s 20-13 win over Italy. In a statement two days later, the IRFU said it was investigating the matter. 

“We’re aware of some targeted abuse online in recent days and continue to work with Signify [a tech firm which specialises in online abuse] and the relevant authorities to report it,” a spokesperson said. 

They added: “It is clear that racist abuse has no place in Irish society and the IRFU has a zero tolerance policy towards racism of any form.”

Co-founder of Signify Jonathan Sebire joins The 42FM hosts Gavin Cooney and Sinéad O’Carroll this week to discuss the wider issue of online abuse of athletes. The company works with a number of organisations and clubs, including Arsenal FC and the International Tennis Federation.

During the conversation, Sebire outlined the process which saw his team monitor and flag some content about the young back row to their client in Ireland.

“The IRFU also brought some new ones that were outside the scope of our monitoring to our attention,” he added, noting that they would be cognisant of the player welfare concerns at the centre of a problem like this. 

“It is a really interesting case study,” he explained, “because it covers the full spectrum from stuff that is right at the tip of the most problematic content – and therefore you are straying into kind of legal spaces – all the way down into kind of grey-area content where there is stuff that is going to be contentious in terms of some people are going to say it should be actioned by the platforms, and some people are going to say it’s part of a debate.

“So we saw the full range, from some explicitly racist imagery and comments all the way down to kind of more dog-whistle-type comments and comments that alluded to things but left them open to interpretation.”

Sebire and his team use social media platforms’ own reporting functions initially, and if no action is taken, they escalate it using partnerships they have built with the firms. 

“And then, because some of the content did cross our threshold and was in the upper, upper levels of what we look at, we did open investigations to look at where is this coming from. Is it from people inside Ireland, or is it from people overseas? And also, in the most serious cases, who is it coming from? And what information can we get there? And then that information is passed to whoever we’re dealing with – to the client – to make a decision about what action they want to take next.”

Sebire noted that the content in question was “at the top range of what we deal with” and that the “majority of problematic comments came from either within Ireland or ex-pat communities with an interest in Ireland”.  

Sebire told the podcast that over the five years the company has worked with Arsenal FC, he has seen fans who engage in this type of behaviour prosecuted but also suspended or banned from club activity, including having season tickets revoked. 

“We identified around 19 people who had season tickets who were sending pretty serious abuse and/or violent threats to their own players, and they suspended them. If it’s less serious, they will do things like say, ‘this doesn’t reflect our values’. There are education programmes that kind of operate around that as well.”

Signify says it only uses open source material in its identification processes. 

It is understood the IRFU sees the legal route as the most appropriate for three of the five case files it received. 

In a statement to The 42FM, the IRFU said, “If any accounts are found to have links to rugby club members we will not hesitate to take action. There is no place for anyone in a rugby club who behaves in this manner.”

The 42FM will be out wherever you get your podcasts on Tuesday morning, 17 March.