Study shows Naomi Osaka was the most abused player on Twitter last year
Naomi Osaka received the highest number of hate tweets last year, according to a study conducted by Pickswise. Pickswise analyzed every tweet sent to professional players last year, with the findings revealing that Osaka received a whopping 32,415 abusive messages on Twitter.
The four-time Grand Slam champion made headlines at last year's French Open when she said she intended to skip all press conferences at the event to protect her mental health. Her announcement was met with unmistakable hostility, with many fans accusing the Japanese of shirking her duties as a professional player.
Top 20 most abused tennis players in 2021 (on twitter)
Includes 19 active players and 1 (guess who) retired player
pickswise.com/tennis/most-ab…
The 24-year-old was also targeted after she announced that she would represent her birth country of Japan rather than the United States at the Tokyo Olympics.
Osaka is also notorious for blocking users who send out negative tweets mentioning her.
Serena Williams second-most hated player after Naomi Osaka
Serena Williams occupies second spot on the list, having received 18,118 hate tweets. Andy Murray, Emma Raducanu and Novak Djokovic round out the top 5, with 11,732, 10,094 and 8,439 hate tweets received respectively. The Serb received a further 7,354 abusive tweets between 4-10 January due to his visa saga in Melbourne.
Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev and Simona Halep were also part of the list.
It should be noted that the data was directly mined from Twitter from January 2021 to December 2021. Messages containing words, phrases, and hashtags that were known to be abusive were considered for the research. A sample size of 100,000 tweets was taken into account.
Here is the top 10 list of the most abused tennis players over the last 12 months:
1. Naomi Osaka - 32,415
2. Serena Williams - 18,118
3. Andy Murray - 11,732
4. Emma Raducanu - 10,094
5. Novak Djokovic - 8,439
6. Roger Federer - 4,261
7. Stefanos Tsitsipas - 4,084
8. Rafael Nadal - 3,588
9. Alexander Zverev - 3,454
10. Simona Halep - 3,181
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