Historic social media posts from England international cricketers Alex Hales and Ateeq Javid have reared their head in recent weeks and earned the pair a reprimand from the Cricket Discipline Commission.

The duo become the latest in a growing list of cricketers to receive reprimands for historic posts they made. Directive 3.3 from the England and Wales Cricket Board states; “No such person may conduct himself in a manner or do any act or omission which may be prejudicial to the interests of cricket, or which may bring the game of cricket or any cricketer or group of cricketers into disrepute.” Antisemitic messages from Javid and a photo of Hales appearing in blackface were both found to have breached this directive.

It can often be difficult for individuals who are active on social media to trawl through thousands of historic posts from many years ago. However, with people being exposed for previous messages and posts on a more frequent basis, there is a growing need for more to be done to review social media accounts for those in public positions.

Not only will players themselves suffer, but the reputational damage felt by the clubs, sponsors and institutions they represent can be monumental. Warren Buffet once said; “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Conflict International’s ‘Social Media Check Plus’ offering is able to examine the profiles and activity of users to screen for any negative or adverse comment towards extremism, swearing, negative sentiment, hate speech, violent images, potential nudity, and toxic language. Once the check is complete, any ‘flagged’ posts will be brought to the attention of the individual, who is able to decide over what to do with the posts.

The Conflict ‘Social Media Check Plus’ system simply takes online screening to another level, searching even ‘closed’ or ‘private’ profiles. If your current social media screening process can’t or won’t do that, speak to us – assuming you’d like the full picture. After all, if a job’s worth doing…

If you would like to find out more about our Reputation Management offering, as well as our Social Media Check Plus product, please contact our Director of Compliance, Roger Bescoby via email here at [email protected].