Study Significance
The authors test whether positive exposure to a high-profile, visibly Muslim celebrity can reduce prejudice by studying Mohamed Salah, an elite soccer player whose arrival at Liverpool F.C. made him a salient public figure in England.
Data and Measurement
They use three primary sources: police hate crime reports across England to measure real-world hate-motivated incidents, a dataset of 15 million tweets from British soccer fans to measure online anti-Muslim expression, and an original survey experiment to measure attitudinal generalization from Salah to Muslims more broadly.
Comparison Design
For the geographic analysis, the authors compare the Liverpool area to a synthetic control—a weighted combination of other areas in England—while online behavior is compared across fans of Liverpool F.C. and fans of other top-flight clubs.
Main Findings and Interpretation
After Salah joined Liverpool F.C., hate crimes in the Liverpool area fell by 16% relative to the synthetic control, and Liverpool fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets compared with fans of other top-flight clubs; a survey experiment suggests that making Salah’s Muslim identity salient helped positive feelings toward him generalize to Muslims more broadly, which the authors present as evidence for the parasocial contact hypothesis.
