“Kareem Hunt cut by the Chiefs for brutalizing woman on video”: online framings of racialized and gendered violence by a professional athlete

In 2018, reports surfaced that NFL player Kareem Hunt was involved in a public altercation. When video footage emerged of him shoving and attempting to kick a woman, many sports fans discussed the scandal in online forums. We examine these discussions through a qualitative analysis of 2,002 comments on Reddit. We identify three frames used to interpret the altercation: (1) Condemning Hunt or violence against women; (2) Vindicating Hunt through victim-blaming, downplaying the incident or providing gendered and racial justifications; and (3) Contextualizing the altercation by considering consequences linked to NFL policies and the role of tabloid media sensationalism. We find that commenters often use ‘soft’ racial and sexist framings to assess Hunt’s culpability. We conclude by discussing the broader implications surrounding media representations of and online reactions to violence against women by racialized athletes.