Acknowledgement of Country: As we share a yarn today, we honour the stories that have been told on this land for thousands of years and acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as the Traditional Custodians of the land we’re recording on, and we pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Joanne Cameron: Societies are driven by sport. They go there for entertainment and for connection and teamwork and physical fitness and all of that, and so, sadly, it is an opportunity for people to offend, to find young people that are vulnerable.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Athletes having to go on to the field of play with threats of how a match needs to go in a particular way, what they need to do, should they go on and play that game. This is a load that we haven't necessarily seen happen or we wouldn't have seen happen 10, 15 years ago play out in the same way.

Joanne Cameron: I think there's something that we can all be doing to role model to our children and to our children's children of what good looks like, and 'How do you be a good online commentator? How do you be a good online participant?'

Dr Emma Kavanagh: That's an exciting prospect to be able to now enable young people to safely and effectively navigate these online worlds that are going to be present, they're going to remain present.

Tim Gavel: Hello and welcome to On Side and our new series on online safety in sport. I'm Tim Gavel. In this first episode we're exploring the evolving risk landscape from online abuse and impersonation to the growing impact of AI, deepfakes and risks to children and young athletes. Joining us are two experts with a deep insight into both the causes of harm and how to prevent it. Dr Emma Kavanagh is a leading researcher in athlete welfare and safe sport with a particular focus on interpersonal violence and online abuse. Welcome to On Side, Emma.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Tim Gavel: We're also joined by Commander Joanne Cameron, who leads the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, bringing decades of experience in policing, intelligence and protecting vulnerable people from online harm. Thanks for joining us today, Commander.

Joanne Cameron: Thanks very much, Tim. Great to be here.

Tim Gavel: Together they'll help us unpack what's changing and what sport needs to prepare for and where the biggest risks are emerging from. Emma, can I start with you? From your perspective, what are the key drivers of online harm in sport?

Dr Emma Kavanagh: It is such a great question. I think part of where I start with is understanding that online abuse is this overarching concept that has loads of different types of harm underneath that. From coercion, sextortion, doxing, talking about the social commentary that goes on around sport, and that there's so many different people that can be recipients of harm. Direct targets such as athletes, managers, officials themselves, but also fans just watching and consuming sport. And when we take that bigger picture, we then realise there can be a whole range of drivers of harm. And there's part of sport as an ecosystem, that visibility, the emotion that goes alongside it, to be a follower, to really be within the experience of like an online sporting environment that can drive interactions, and also that feeling of sense of knowing someone online. We follow people, there's a celebrity aspect which makes people feel accessible to us and might lead to comments being made online. But we don't just want to look at abuse within the elite sport sector, It's also thinking about youth sport and pathways and transitioning athletes and interpersonal dynamics. So there are so many reasons that we can see triggers for harm in online environments playing out in the sporting ecosystem.

Tim Gavel: And Commander Cameron, I guess this is something that your world focuses on as well. What are the emerging threats when it comes to young people?

Joanne Cameron: Yeah, Tim, I'm with you on that ecosystem. First of all, unfortunately, the kind of offending that we see online has come from that kind of offending in the physical world and a point I'm really conscious of making now is that traditionally we might have said there was physical abuse or physical harm and separately online harm, those 2 worlds have absolutely merged. The virtual harm can come from a physical base, the physical harm can come from a virtual interaction, and we all have to understand that this ecosystem is now, in my view, blurred between the virtual and the physical. Policing responses haven't always understood that those two environments have blurred, and unfortunately, the traditional criminality, sadly, it's still there, exploiting children, it's just that technology and the virtual world are creating whole new ways of offending and creating a whole new ecosystem of harm that we as a whole community need to really understand so that we can respond to it properly.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: That's such a good point. That notion of like, geographies of space and are we ever really offline? Is there a space or reality?

Joanne Cameron: Not anymore.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Yeah, I completely agree.

Joanne Cameron: And so your offending, unfortunately, has gone global. The reach of a fan to their sporting followers or sporting community, it's all around the world and we need to have a global response to it as well.

Tim Gavel: Is sport different, do you think, than the rest of the community? Do people feel as though athletes are fair game, especially female athletes?

Dr Emma Kavanagh: I think we tend to look at this through that elite level picture. So we might well look at following sport, having an online commentary, being a fan of sport, that visibility, that real time commentary, so maybe it's unique, but I also think now with that advent and integration of technology, the ease of comment and access and response that can be emotionally driven isn't necessarily unique to a sporting ecosystem. But you mentioned women and risks to women and girls, they span across different environments but certainly we see risks to women athletes so the type of abuse that women athletes receive can be gendered in nature.

Tim Gavel: Commander Cameron, just having a look at I guess, this form of exploitation to a certain degree or online abuse, how does that translate to a sporting sense? Because I'd imagine you're looking at it from a far wider perspective, but from a sporting sense, how does it materialise?

Joanne Cameron: There's definitely an interaction between people, and our focus is on children, and young people being exploited. The focus of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation is in response to online child sexual exploitation, but there's many other forms of exploitation that are occurring and the harms are as serious as you ever want to imagine what they are and the sporting communities, sporting organisations –  societies are driven by sport. They go there for entertainment and for connection and teamwork and physical fitness and all of that, and so, sadly, it is an opportunity for people to offend, to find young people that are vulnerable. But the positive side of sport is that it's also the environment that can safeguard, it's the environment that can protect kids and it's the environment where other trusted adults other than mum and dad, can send messages of protection that we're here to keep you safe and we're here to listen to you if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to reach out to a trusted adult. So as much as it could be an environment where harm can occur, it's also a great opportunity to build out those protective behaviours because we are never going to be able to respond solely from a law enforcement angle, there has to always be prevention and protection at the core of the way all of society runs and I'd say in the way sporting organisations and sporting societies run as well.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: I look at some of the early research looking at online abuse in sport and it really did come from that picture of thinking about elite level athletes who are social media facing and maybe comments that come in through platforms like Instagram or X and it's often given us quite a narrow conceptualisation of what abuse is and then the risk factors, and I hear you speaking about how we need to have eyes open across the sporting ecosystem and like, considering the vulnerabilities of young people and also the opportunities for protection. So for me that is so vital to our understanding.

Joanne Cameron: Yeah. It goes to role modelling, doesn't it? I mean, you don't always listen to mum and dad, but you'll follow your favourite sporting guru or you'll follow your football coach or you'll follow your badminton team captain or what have you. And that's where I think the role of sport to be that great role model, that protective space. Sadly, some kids come from really vulnerable positions, not through any of their fault at all. Families, groups of people are doing their best, but some kids are vulnerable, they're susceptible, and I think there's a role wherever kids are interacting with their sporting teams or their school sports and things like that, it spreads into education, it spreads into the sporting environment where, again, those trusted adults are there to help kids if they need it, but also role modelling good behaviour. And I think there's something that we can all be doing to role model to our children and to our children's children of what good looks like, and 'How do you be a good online commentator? How do you be a good online participant?'

Tim Gavel: What are offenders using in terms of technology to get into that young people's space? What sort of things do they do?

Joanne Cameron: There's often a vulnerability. Some kids or any person can be vulnerable, whether it's worried about their image or they're worried about, being not as good as others or what have you, and unfortunately, offenders will often target that vulnerability, build that sense of trust that they're the only person that young kid can rely on. It's really quite manipulative behaviour that can be at play in that grooming environment, to the point that then the kids or the person being exploited is isolated, they're scared of being in trouble and there's that veil of secrecy wrapped around the victim that they don't seek help and they think that the person manipulating them or exploiting them are the ones that they should be trusting. I say we need to get out there and have these conversations with kids from the youngest age that you want to have them so that kids are protective, they're protective of themselves. They know when things don't feel right, they know when something's just not making them feel good, and getting those conversations had – honestly, it's a hard topic. It's a very hard topic to be had with your kids, but I say you need to be having those conversations either at home, in the locker room, at school, so that kids can build protective behaviours themselves, but if in the event that they do find themselves in a tricky situation, not feeling comfortable, thinking they might have done something wrong, they need to know adults, anyone, is going to listen to them and not be reactive. A bit of research that we did in 2020 with parents of Australia. Of those parents surveyed, when asked 'How would you react if your child admitted that they had shared an intimate image with someone online?' 80% of the parents reacted with anger to their own children. Now that's ultimate victim blaming. These kids have been tricked, manipulated and caught themselves into a situation where they've gone and done something they now regret. And to think that they don't have any trusted adult that they can go to for help, it almost breaks my heart. We as adults need to be there for kids, the sporting coaches, the sporting managers, the teachers, the parents, the adults of the world, we really need to be coming around and helping our kids out. One, to protect themselves and two, if they get stuck and they're in trouble, they know who they can go to get some help.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Yeah, and sport could be the one site where we're having those conversations, we're having them early.

Joanne Cameron: Yeah.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: We see some of the similar patterns then in adult athletes. There's been a rise in cases of sextortion as an example and just that feeling of like, trust, not being embarrassed about that. 'Who can I reach out to? What would the support structures be in place?' Like, that feeling being able to talk about that without judgement or scrutiny. And so being able to really do that at an early age with young people to empower them, both around how to use these spaces safely to keep themselves safe in that environment, if not who and where to go to will be powerful so that we're not –

Joanne Cameron: 100%.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: retrofitting that at later times.

Joanne Cameron: The issue of gender came up before, and in the space of financial extortion or sextortion as we call it, the most vulnerable actually are young men, teenage boys – most vulnerable to being manipulated. And the point there is that they think they've got this virtual friendship association, someone, he/she's my mate online, they might think they know who that individual is and they might be thinking they're pretty nice and all of that – these virtual relationships are often fake. They're complete manipulation by, in some cases, organised crime groups in other countries, doing it for financial gain and the consequences to some of these victims that are being extorted, it's absolutely tragic.

Tim Gavel: It can lead to match fixing and match manipulation amongst other things.

Joanne Cameron: Absolutely, yeah. Emma, I guess in your world too, you've come across people who have a sense of helplessness. You know, 'I'm in this situation, how do I get out of it?'

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Yeah, and we're still learning from a point, again, maybe because of a narrow view of what we were talking about, but just that normalisation in sport, as an athlete, it's something that you're going to have to manage, it's part of the process of being an athlete and that can lead to just a lack of conversation about 'Should we be normalising this?' and then doing so, what that does for a wide range of harms where we need to be able to reach out. But we know it has a really significant impact on those that are affected and at the moment we're not doing enough on that education piece to be able to empower people in these spaces.

Tim Gavel: Yes. What sort of harm is it doing to an athlete when they encounter online abuse?

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Oh and I mean, the harm, something that's relatively unique to the individual of course, and the circumstances, but we know across the literature base that there's a range of harms. They can be psychological or emotional, that can be through impact on their mental health, increased anxiety, thinking about reduced confidence, lots of outcomes that would be psychological in nature. I've been doing a lot of work around women athletes and stalking and fixated threat, and this isn't unique to women, but that fear of physical safety as well and that immediate threat within my environment. Social and relational impacts, the spillover. When we hear, we'll be hearing from a panel of people that have lived experience about how that plays out in their relationships and how they can be spillover to others, be that friends, family members, and it not just, isolating or having an impact just on one individual. Performance. I think, again, we're here to talk about sport – we know there's a real performance impact. One of the things that got me interested in this topic was travelling as a psychologist with athletes that were suddenly going like, 'Okay, I've nailed my performance, I know what I'm doing. Technically and tactically I'm where I want to be, I'm in great physical shape, but I don't know how to deal with the noise anymore. Like the additional cognitive load that goes alongside that constant scrutiny.' And even, we're talking about abuse today, even like positive comments about performance or body or athleticism is noise and that additional noise has a range of consequences for individuals. So wide ranging impacts that are unique to individuals and situations.

Tim Gavel: An additional aspect to this of course is online gambling too, with disgruntled gamblers really targeting athletes when they've lost money and blaming the athletes for their losses. It can have a really detrimental impact and not just psychological harm, but it can go into the physical as well.

Dr Emma Kavanagh: Yeah, absolutely. We're having better conversations around that, but we know athletes having to go on to the field of play with threats of how a match needs to go in a particular way, what they need to do, should they go on and play that game. This is a load that we haven't necessarily seen happen or we wouldn't have seen happen 10, 15 years ago play out in the same way. I think athletes that I'm working with now are competing in a wildly different environment to the one that I did.

Tim Gavel: Yes. To both of you, if you're a parent, what are the warning signs?