Kick It Out chairperson Lord Ouseley believes the wider trend in society of social media abuse is a key factor behind the rise in the number of reported incidents of discrimination in football.
The sport's equality and inclusion organisation, which takes up cases on behalf of complainants, released half-season statistics relating to incidents of all forms of discrimination within the game on Wednesday which showed an increase of 59 per cent from the same period last season (177 incidents).
Ouseley, despite the increase in recorded cases, is confident the sport is in an improved position for those who play or watch but is concerned by the "devastating" effect social media can play in the game.
"We heard the Prime Minister talking about the way in which social media is having a devastating effect in the way in which hate and abuse is prevalent," he told Sky Sports News.
"The way in which it works in football is the same way. We have had a massive increase in social media abuse. One third of all the reports we have handled have come through social media, with 88 per cent coming through Twitter.
"These are areas in which it is easy for those who want to abuse and use hate to penetrate it and get away with.
"We are quite clear that there are problems that have to be addressed and that is only one aspect of it."
Ouseley acknowledged the ease of access to social media makes the task of policing complaints difficult for both security organisations and the government a difficult proposition and called on the communication platforms to take their own "direct action".
"That is the real problem with the social media outlets," Ouseley added. "Clearly what the government is considering now is to bring in legislation that can deal with that.
"The difficulty for us in that particular arena is that the police find it very difficult to take on the volume of complaints that come through and how to channel that through to taking action.
"We are looking to those social media organisations to take direct action themselves and that is one of the areas that we are working on with those social media providers so that they can start to remove the abuse from their platforms.
"We are working through fans' groups themselves in trying to deal with the problems of those who want to not follow a better code of behaviour which many fans are now complying with.
"It is now fans who will make complaints about things that they have heard and want them investigated."