A heartbreaking statistic has revealed the two tennis players who receive the most hate online are Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic.
The 25-year-old star won her first Grand Slam at the Australian Open earlier this year when she beat out the reigning Wimbledon champion, Elena Rybakina.
However, a new study conducted by the World Sports Network (WSN) has revealed that over the last 16 months, Sabalenka has received a ton of negative feedback across social media.
To achieve the worrying data, WSN “measured the social sentiments of tweets mentioning players in a negative light as well as the public’s reaction towards particular Facebook posts.”
Google Bard was deployed by the company to analyse any tweets that mentioned the top six seeds at this year’s French Open.
Social media interactions were monitored from January 2022 to May 2023, and studies conducted at the University of Belgrade were also utilised.
Arnya Sabalenka receives the most hate on social media Results found that 15 percent of the Belarusian’s Twitter sentiments were negative and five percent of Facebook interactions relating to her were marked as ‘angry’.
Rybakina came in second place with 10 percent Twitter negativity and four percent adverse reactions via Facebook, while 29-year-old Caroline Garcia took third with 10 percent and one percent respectively.
As per Tennis 365, the data also discovered that WTA players receive a higher rate of online abuse compared to their male counterparts.
The top six female seeds at this year’s French Open have an average negative sentiment of 8.6 percent — higher than the male’s 8.3 percent average.
Novak Djokovic is the male tennis star that receives the most abuse
Switching to the men’s statistics, it has been revealed that 15 percent of tweets mentioning Djokovic over the last 16 months were negative, and 11 percent of his Facebook interactions were too.
Stefanos Tsitsipas placed second with 15 percent and seven percent respectively, followed by Carlos Alcaraz in third place.
Over the specified period, six percent of Alcaraz’s tweets were negative and just one percent of all Facebook interactions were angry.
French Open participants will use AI to stop cyberbullying
This year the French Tennis Federation (FFT) has revealed that players participating in the Grand Slam will be offered artificial intelligence to protect them from social media trolling.
AI technology called ‘Bodyguard’ will be utilised by various tennis stars at Roland-Garros as a way to protect their mental health at the tournament.
The FFT said: “As part of its strategy to take care of the players’ mental health, the FFT decided to collaborate with ‘Bodyguard’ to fight against cyberbullying.”
The programme will monitor the comments the tournament participants receive across social media and filter out negative sentiments in less than 200 milliseconds.
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