Coordinated racist bot attack on Munster's Edwin Edogbo 'deeply concerning', expert says

UCC lecturer Stephen McCarthy says online racist abuse of Irish sports stars such as Edogbo has the potential to get worse going forward

Edwin Edogbo was targeted with online racist abuse after making his debut for Ireland in the Six Nations clash against Italy. Picture: Inpho/Billy Stickland

The coordinated bot attacks on social media such as the racist abuse directed at Munster rugby player Edwin Edogbo will only worsen in years to come, a University College Cork professor has warned.

The Cobh native made his debut for Ireland against Italy in the Six Nations clash in Dublin earlier this month.

Unfortunately, the occasion was marred by online racist abuse directed at the player on Irish Rugby social media channels.

A post on the official Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) X account on February 14, titled “Edwin on debut”, showed Edogbo singing Ireland’s Call at the Aviva Stadium.

An examination of the comments under the social media post highlighted quite an alarming trend, with a number of racist posts, many of which came from accounts outside of Ireland.

Dr Stephen McCarthy, senior lecturer in information systems at UCC told the Irish Examiner the rise of bot activity, highlighted by the racist abuse suffered by Edogbo was a very concerning development.

“The cases we heard of before in the US was when there was coordinated bot activity from Russia during the US election," he said.

“So to read about something like this close to home is kind of scary. But overall the idea is to get people to fight and create polarisation.

They don’t care about rugby or they don’t care about the player. They just want to get people riled up. 

"These bots are programmed in a way to get people’s attention and capture their emotion. It is deeply concerning.” 

Mr McCarthy said online racist abuse of Irish sports stars such as Edogbo has the potential to get worse going forward.

“It is going to be a tough few years when it comes to these types of cases, and we are very likely going to see more of them. Attention is everything online, and unfortunately these posts get attention.

“Bots that we saw over the last 10 years tended to be pre-programmed and had rules, they might just generate the same text multiple times.

“But now, with Agentic AI, these more advanced bots can respond to comments and message people."

Mr McCarthy questioned whether social media companies would take action.

"I am kind of doubtful. Unfortunately, we have seen this before and things haven’t changed. It is going to fall back on us as users of these platforms to be more informed, keeping an eye out and finding out if it is a real person posting on social media or not.” 

In a statement to The Irish Examiner, a spokesperson for the IRFU said an investigation into the abuse suffered by Edogbo was under way in collaboration with Signify, a data technology company that specialisies in protecting athletes from online abuse.

“We are aware of some targeted abuse online in recent days and continue to work with Signify and the relevant authorities to report it.

“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.”