Majority of Brits support measures to reduce racism on social media

After Sunday night’s European Football Championship there have been many reports of racist and abusive behaviour -particularly on social media. New polling by Ipsos shows that there is strong support for a range of measures to stop racism on social media. 

The majority of Brits overall (71%) and a similar proportion of ethnic minorities (68%) support social media platforms removing posts that are racist. Around seven in ten Brits (68%) also support financial penalties for social media companies who fail to remove racist comments or posts. Among ethnic minorities, support for this measure is 63%. Of all the measures we asked about, there is slightly lower support – although it is still backed by the majority – for social media platforms to add warnings to posts that people may consider racist (61%). This level of support is the same among ethnic minorities (59%). 

The study also finds that the majority ethnic minorities say they have seen or heard racist posts on social media over the last year. More than half (55%) of Britons from an ethnic minority background say they have personally seen or heard posts or messages on social media that were racist.  For Black people this rises to 62% and for Asian people this is 51%. Among the public this figure is just 36%.  

This comes within a new, extensive report by Ipsos looking into public perceptions of institution racism in Britain, set to be released next week. 

Kelly Beaver, Managing Director of Public Affairs at Ipsos, said:

These findings illustrate that witnessing racist posts on social media is fairly commonplace for ethnic minorities in Britain today. However, there is strong support from all sections of the public to tighten measures to reduce racism on social media platforms – including financial sanctions for social media companies who don’t act. 

Technical note

• Ipsos interviewed an online sample of 2,600 adults aged 16-75 years across Great Britain between 7-13 May 2021. The sample comprises a nationally representative sample of 2,200 people and a further boost of 400 ethnic minority respondents, giving an overall sample of 2,600 people. In total, 667 ethnic minority people were interviewed as part of this survey, including 200 Black/Black British people, 316 Asian/Asian British and 139 people from a Mixed or multiple ethnic group. Data are weighted to the profile of the population and the ethnic minority sample is weighted to the overall profile of the ethnic minority population. All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of error.