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Is Liverpool F.C. forward Mohamed Salah’s success reducing Islamophobic behaviors and attitudes in England ? It is a question that was answered by a group of researchers in a study released in May.
Entitled «Can Exposure to Celebrities Reduce Prejudice ? The Effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic Behaviors and Attitudes», the paper found out that after the Muslim player rose to fame the number of Islamophobic behaviors in North West England dropped significantly.
The researchers revealed that «Merseyside county (home to Liverpool F.C.) experienced a 18.9% drop in hate crimes relative to a synthetic control, while no similar effect was found for other types of crime».
«We also find that Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets (a drop from 7.2% to 3.4% of tweets about Muslims) relative to fans of other top-flight English soccer clubs».
The survey, conducted by Immigration policy Lab, indicates that these changes were driven by football fans’ familiarity with Islam through the Egyptian player. «Our findings indicate that positive exposure to outgroup role models can reveal new information that humanizes the outgroup writ large», the same survey suggested.
The study’s results were based on crime observations, 15 million tweets from UK football fans and an original survey experiment of 8,060 Liverpool F.C. fans.
