Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams

Fil: Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina.

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Autores principales: Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique, López Fontanelle, Martiniano
Otros Autores: Khalid, Osama
Formato: Tesis Tesis de grado updatedVersion
Lenguaje:Español
Publicado: Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía 2025
Acceso en línea:https://repositorio.udesa.edu.ar/handle/10908/25640
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Repositorio Digital - Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSa) de Universidad de San Andrés
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spelling I37-R143-10908-256402025-09-05T03:00:21Z Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique López Fontanelle, Martiniano Khalid, Osama Fil: Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina. Fil: López Fontanelle, Martiniano. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina. This thesis examines whether the sustained visibility of Iñaki Williams, the first Black player to become a central figure at Athletic Club de Bilbao, has influenced racial attitudes in the Basque Country. Building on the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis, which posits that mediated exposure to minority figures can reduce prejudice, we employ both traditional crime data and novel social media metrics to assess changes in discrimination following Williams’s rise to prominence in early 2016. Using a Difference-in-Differences framework and a Synthetic Control Method, we document a 32–34% reduction in monthly hate crimes and a 65% drop in annual hate-crime counts in the Basque Country relative to appropriate counterfactuals. Complementing these “hard” outcomes, we collect and classify over 2.4 million tweets using a state-of-the-art Spanish-language hate-speech model. Our findings reveal consistent post-2016 declines in hateful speech (–1.7%), aggression (–2.2%), and targeted insults (–1.4%) among Athletic supporters compared to synthetic controls. These results suggest that Williams’s symbolic role disrupted entrenched narratives of ethnic exclusivity and catalyzed a modest recalibration of local norms around race and belonging. The thesis contributes to a growing literature on the social impact of minority representation in elite sports and highlights the value of combining official statistics with high-frequency online data to trace shifts in public sentiment. 2025-09-04T17:36:56Z 2025-09-04T17:36:56Z 2025-07 Tesis info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis info:ar-repo/semantics/tesis de grado info:eu-repo/semantics/updatedVersion https://repositorio.udesa.edu.ar/handle/10908/25640 spa info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ application/pdf application/pdf Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía
institution Universidad de San Andrés
institution_str I-37
repository_str R-143
collection Repositorio Digital - Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSa)
language Español
description Fil: Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía; Argentina.
author2 Khalid, Osama
author_facet Khalid, Osama
Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique
López Fontanelle, Martiniano
format Tesis
Tesis de grado
Tesis de grado
updatedVersion
author Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique
López Fontanelle, Martiniano
spellingShingle Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique
López Fontanelle, Martiniano
Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
author_sort Buscaglia, Tomás Enrique
title Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
title_short Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
title_full Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
title_fullStr Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
title_full_unstemmed Sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of Iñaki Williams
title_sort sports celebrities and racism reduction: the case of iñaki williams
publisher Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Economía
publishDate 2025
url https://repositorio.udesa.edu.ar/handle/10908/25640
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