Sports and Social Media

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Hello, my name is Will Harrison and in this blog I will be examining and taking a deeper look into the relationship between the sports world and the expanding social media/social networking sites. The advances in technology and these rapidly growing social networking sites have swept our society. The result of this is a change in culture and the way our society functions. An example of this is the sports world, which is a crucial and large part of every culture around the world. What new technology and social networking sites have done is revolutionize how sports fans, sports commentators, analyses, and athletes interact and communicate with each other. This interaction between the different participants of the sports world is what I what to further analyze.

What I find interesting about this topic is the rapid role and expansion social media has had in the sports community. I am here to point out the crucial and interwoven relationship these two have with each other. What you can expect to learn from this blog is exactly what role social media plays in the sports community today and how do sports fans use and feel about social media in relation to sports. What triggered this interest in me was when I was watching an ESPN show called “Audibles”. The whole concept of this show was twitter fans of the show tweet questions to the shows hosts, who include NFL legends such as Steve Young, Jerry Rice, and Herm Edwards, and Keyshawn Johnson, at which point the hosts answer all the twitter questions they can on air. What I found so interesting was how sports fans on twitter basically direct guide the show. It also made me realize how almost all other sports shows on ESPN use twitter and facebook quite often for numerous reasons such as news, to interact with sports fans, and to communicate with athletes. This realization sparked a big interest and a need to learn more.

Some of the questions I wanted answered and did find an answer to during the creation in this research blog include, how often do sports fans use social media as a resource and interaction platform for sports? How do sports fans use social media in relation to sports? What gratification do sports fans get from using social media as a platform for interaction and information for sports. And what are the main sports related usage sports fans use social media for? The majority of these were answered in my survey and an interview that I did, but we’ll talk further about that later on.

The research I did for this was fairly extensive and rewarding. I found numerous scholarly articles and books that did some analyses of twitter and facebook. The greatest source of information I found was a case study that analyzed the use of twitter between athletes and fans. I also looked at team websites, athletes facebook and twitter pages, and one team site actually offered to let sports fans directly talk to their athletes through facebook. Another great website I found gave me all the numbers of facebook fans, facebook talking, and twitter followers of sport related topics. All of these sites are a perfect find because they all target my topic exactly and all helped me answer my questions. They also helped form a conclusion about this topic, which is that the sports world and social media sites complement each other and that social networking sites can function as much more than just a place for people to interact with each other, but is also a source for information.

Bibliography

Wenner, Lawrence A. Media, Sports, and Society Newbury Park, CA Sage Publications, 1989.

- -Media, Sports, and Society is a book about the huge part sports play in the media world and how it’s constantly growing. This book was made in 1989 so this shows how even twenty-three years ago sports had a large role in the media. Look at it today and how sports has gone way past being viewed on the television and is now all over the internet, facebook, twitter, applications, and phones, and ipads. This will be a useful source because I’ll be able to compare how sports media in 1989 to the social media of today.

Kaplan, Andreas. Haenlein, Michael. Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, Vol. 53, 2010

- -This review journal gives incite into the effect social media has on the world and the opportunities it can provide for a business, sports industries, and teams. It also provides information about the numerous ways social media is used today. This will be useful for my project because I will be able to explain how and why social media is now a huge part of the sports world. It is also useful because it informs exactly how social media benefits companies such as sports companies.

Rothschild, Phillip. C. Social Media Use in Sports and Entertainment. International Journal of Festival Management, Vol.2(2), p. 139-150, 2011

- -This article is about how social media is utilized and handled by sports and entertainment in the present day. It discusses how some sports teams/companies use social media to increase revenue and for market strategies. It points out how those who fully understand and have defined social media are the companies that gain the most revenue from it. This article will be useful for my project in that it provides useful information about the methods of use in social media by sports.

Safko, Lon. The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons Inc. New Jersey, 2010

- - This book is about how businesses can use social media to their advantage in the business world. It is a guide that shows businesses how to utilize the social media world to their benefit. This book will be useful for my project because it will help me better understand why companies such as ESPN, began shifting their focuses toward enhancing its presence in the social networking world. It will also help me to understand the tactics and strategies used by ESPN to make the transition from its television dominance to the social media world.

Rowe, David. Sport, Culture, and the Media. Open University Press, Philadelphia, 1999

- -This article is about how influential and popular sports are in this country and how it plays a huge role in the culture of the country. Sports is a every day social activity and social media topic is continuing to expand. With the creation of the internet in the 90s, the sports world was able spread even further and so began a new way to experience sports. This article help me explain the cultural aspects of sports and social media.

Huberman, Bernardo A. Romero, Daniel M. and Wu, Fang. Social networks that matter: Twitter Under the Microscope. Social Computing Lab, HP Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA, 2008

- -This article is that takes a deeper look into twitter and analyzes its function and the ways and reasons why people use it. It points out that what drives the usage which is a dispersed network of connections of friends and followers. It allows for constant communication with a vast community. This will be useful for my project because it will help me make the connection between sports and social networks.

Joinson, Adam A. ‘Looking at’, ‘Looking up’ or ‘Keeping up with’ People? Motives and Uses of Facebook. School of Management University of Bath Bath United Kingdom, 2008

-This article analyzes the reasons why people use social networking sites and the gratification they get from using it. They conducted several experiments with 137 facebook users to answer these questions about social networking. This article will be very helpful with my project because it help me to understand and discover how sports became integrated into sports.

Kwak, Haewoon. What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? Department of Computer Science, KAIST 335 Gwahangno, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea, 2010

- -This article studys the functions of twitter and tries to determines what purpose does it serve, and social network site or a news media. This will be useful for my project because it will point out certain traits about twitter that show why it is use in thing like sports news.

Cashmore, Ellis. Sports Culture: An A-Z Guide. Bengry, Erwin. Rutledge Publications, New York, NY 2002.

- This book is primary is about the role of sports in cultures around the world. The author emphasizes that we all live in culture and each culture is constantly influenced by sports. The notion that sports plays more of a role then most realize is the main message the author is trying to get across. This will help my project in that it will help me better understand the role of sports in culture, and our culture is very much linked to social media.

Kassing, Jefferey W. Sanderson, Jimmy. Fan-Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro. International Journal of Sport Communication, pages 113-128, 2010

- This case study is an examination of a cycling tour in Italy and how the fans interacted with the athletes through twitter. The authors tracked the tweets by both the fans and athletes for the whole tour which was 3 weeks. They concluded that twitter help form a immediacy between fans and athletes, which before the time of twitter wasn’t really possible. This case study will probably be my main source of information because it targets my topic exactly. I will use this case study to better understand why social media has become such a large part of the sports world.

Data, Methods, and Ethics

To answer the many questions I have about this topic and to have a better understanding of the all of its components, I used several methods of research that I analyzed. I did research online and found a large amount of archival data such as articles and books that covered my topic very well. Another important part of my research was an interview I did with an assistant for the San Jose Giants baseball team and the student manager for the university baseball team. The core of my research was a survey I conducted in which asked many questions about people’s uses of social media in relation to sports. The interview and survey was a perfect source of information for my project because they directly involve the heart of my topic, which are the sports fans that use social media. The archival data provided an in depth look into facebook and twitter themselves, as well as their involvement in sports. So all of these sources provide important pieces to my research and helped me fill in all the blanks.

I created my survey using a Google form and then invited all my friends on facebook (including ones that are fans of ESPN, Sports Center and a number of sports teams on facebook) to take it. All the people the end up participating in the survey submitted their results to me. A Google form gives me the ability to see all the answers to the survey at once, which allowed me to easily analyze and interpret the data to make graphs and charts to observe the results. For my interview, I formulated a series of questions that cover the main interest of my topic. I selected someone who is very much involved in the sports world. I asked him about ten questions, including the questions I mentioned earlier on the home page. This interview took about ten minutes and was an insightful interview because it helped me fill in the blanks to some of my questions and brought some more uses of social media in relation to sports to the surface. I did try and sent a tweet to the show Audibles, but no luck getting my tweet on the show.

The only ethical concerns I had was making sure that all names for the survey and interview remain anonymous, which I promised to all people that took the survey in a message I sent to all of them. I did use an informed consent form for the interview I used and assured the individual that that his name would remain completely anonymous if he wished. He did wish for his name to remain anonymous so he will be called John Morgan

Archival Data

For my archival data, I found quite a large amount of information but I chose two main sources to further analyze because they best covered my topic and gave me the best direct information. I found these sites using Google, Google Scholar, and the OSCAR university catalog. It took a few days, but I did eventually find all the information needed to carry out this task of analyzing social media’s relation with sports. I found my data using key terms such as sports, facebook, twitter, social networking usage, and of course social media and sports. My criteria for choosing data I would analyze from the result that I founds was articles or books that made a connection between social media and sports, focused on how social media sites are used, or examined sports in a social or culture way. Any sources of information that didn’t provide any of these I chose to exclude. I also did research on facebook and twitter to look at athletes and get counts for the amount of facebook fans and twitter followers they have.

Interview

For the interview, I had an acquaintance with someone hugely involved in the sports world. I selected him because I knew he was a big sports fan/social media user and he is around sports everyday of his life. I actually only interviewed one person, but because of his involvement in social media and sports, I felt that his responses would sufficiently answer the kinds of questions I had about the relationship between sports and social media. The responses I got perfectly filled in the blanks to my questions and was a crucial part to piecing together my conclusions. I did record and transcribe the interview changed his name upon his request. The questions are below.
-How often do sports you use social media as a resource and interaction platform for sports?

-How do you use social media in relation to sports?

-What gratification do you get from using social media as a platform for interaction and information for sports?

-What’s the main sports related use you use social media for?

-How do you get your game updates when you’re not watching the game?

-Which social networking site do you use most for sport related activity?

-Are you apart of any sports groups or communities on social networking sites? Which ones?

-Do you participate in any ESPN surveys, especially ones aired on the show?

-Do you follow any players on twitter or are you a facebook fan of any players? Do you follow their social media activity?

-What is your favorite feature or characteristic of social media’s integration into the sports world?

Survey Data

I did create a survey to use as a source of data to analyze how the majority feel about and use sports and social media together. For the people I chose to participate, I firstly looked at all my friends on facebook and tried to find all the ones that showed they liked and are fans of sport teams, athletes, ESPN, Sports Center, Sports Nation, and ESPN First take. All the individuals that are fans of these on facebook I directly sent an invitation to them to take the survey. I chose them because since they had an interest in sports, I knew they would have more of an interest in taking the survey and would give the greatest answers to my questions. I then sent a mass invitation to all my friends to take the survey so I could get more diversity for my survey and get overall look into how the all people view and use the connection between sports and social media. Below is a link to the survey

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEtYTUlnbTU3dm85Z29YVnZPcTFsX2c6MQ#gid=0

Analysis

All the data I collected and analyzed from the results of my survey, my interview and my archival research, has helped me to better understand this relationship between sports and social media and has answered the questions that came with this topic. What I came to learn during my research and data collection was some of the reasons social media is such a large part of sports, how sports fans view social media in relation to sports, and what sports more popular in the social media world. I will first analyze some of the archival data I found and point out the key components that will bring this relationship to the surface more.

Probably the greatest and most insightful piece of data I found was a case study called “Fan and Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the Giro”. This case study was my greatest find of information because it directly targets my exact topic and it shed some light on the interaction between fans and athletes. This study was done by Jeffrey W. Kassing and Jimmy Sanderson from Arizona State University. Here is the link: linkhttp://wspahn.camel.ntcpe.edu.tw/ezcatfiles/t063/download/attdown/0/100B%20%B7_%ADb%20fan%20interaction%20Twitter.pdf. This study was conducted on a major three week cycling Tour of Italy (the Giro) in which athletes such as Lance Armstrong attended. The study focused on the twitter activity between athletes and fans. To give some context about this study, an issue existed with in the this major cycling tour, which was that not all fans could watch the event because some cable and satellite packages did not cover it. These limitations opened the door for twitter to become a source for sporting information. So what these researchers did was catalog the tweets from eight riders, one of which was Lance Armstrong, for the whole event. By the end of the event Armstrong sent 394 tweets, which accounted 53% of all the tweets sent between the eight riders. During the event Armstrong used twitter to promote his cancer initiative, to comment on public affairs, to share results and opinions about other racers and races, and to interact with friends and fans. Armstrong currently has 1,207,445 twitter followers, which is more evidence of Armstrong’s heavy twitter activity. I believe this case study shows that twitter can be much more than just a social interacting site. Armstrong used tweeter to do so much more then just communicate with others. He used it to promote, provide updates on the race, and voice his opinion. How he used twitter shows its versatility and why so many people use it in relation to sports. It allows fans to directly interact with athletes, to get updates, and receive vital information on what’s going on. In this case twitter capitalized off of television’s faults and this shows that fans desire things that television can’t provide, a direct line to the athletes themselves. Social media is becoming the new bridge between fans and athletes and not only for interaction, but to better understand the athletes themselves and receive vital information that sports fans crave.

Another important source of archival data that I found, analyzed, and will be using in this project is a site that provided a count of all the twitter followers, facebook fans, and facebook talking of sports teams and organizations. This is important because it gives me an idea of many people worldwide are sports active in social media. Below are graphs I have created using the information from the source I found. The first graph shows the top 10 sports teams and organizations that are followed on social media sites in the U.S. The second graph shows the top 10 worldwide sports teams and organizations that are followed on social media sites.

Now what didn’t surprise me here was that soccer dominated the worldwide results with the FC Barcelona team having 31,847,209 facebook fans and soccer in general have a total of 127,320,738 facebook fans! So this shows that soccer is the undisputed worldwide sports leader in facebook. This was to be expected because soccer is the world’s most popular sport and largest spectator sport. However, it is quite a different story in the U.S. Now before finding this source, my first thought was that the NFL and its teams would be in the lead in the social media spectrum for the U.S. However, this source proved otherwise. The leader is the NBA with 14,317,609 facebook fans and 10,776,424 twitter fans (which is more twitter followers then the facebook worldwide leader, FC Barcelona, which as 9,657,923 twitter followers). So the NBA is the worldwide sports leader of twitter. Interestingly enough, the runner up in the U.S. for top facebook fans is the LA Lakers, an NBA team. The LA Lakers have 13,725,188 facebook fans. ESPN takes second place in twitter race in the U.S. with 4,284,506 followers. Now why the NBA? That is a good question, and I will do my best to answer it. After further research, I think I found a possibility that explains the NBA’s popularity in the social media world. I searched for the biggest NBA stars and legends and found something interesting. It seems that NBA players have the largest sum of facebook fans and twitter followers, more so than the biggest NFL and MLB stars. Lebron James has 10,622,688 facebook fans and 4,770,163 twitter followers http://www.facebook.com/LeBron http://twitter.com/#!/KingJames. Kobe Bryant has 13,032,374 facebook fans http://www.facebook.com/Kobe. Dwyane Wade has 5,972,482 facebook fans and 3,218,950 twitter fans http://twitter.com/#!/DwyaneWade http://www.facebook.com/dwyanewade. The biggest surprise was Michael Jordan, who has 18,927,374 facebook fans! http://www.facebook.com/MichaelJordan.These numbers tower over the amount of facebook fans and twitter followers NFL and MLB stars have. The only stars that come remotely close are Chad Ochocinco with 2 million facebook fans and 3.4 million twitter followers http://twitter.com/#!/ochocinco http://www.facebook.com/OchoCinco and Reggie Bush with 1.9 million facebook fans and 2.4 million twitter followers http://www.facebook.com/ReggieBush http://twitter.com/#!/reggie_bush.

Why is this? Well it seems, based off my research and observations, that NBA stars are more active and interactive on social media sites. For example, Dwayne Wayne interacts with his fans by posting videos on facebook and Michael Jordan’s wall has 155 thousand likes for his activity. I also notice how much they use twitter because I watch a lot of Sports Center and it always shows how these players are constantly tweeting year around. They tweet their opinions and thoughts all the time and Sports Centers uses these tweets in their show. So my conclusion is that the athletes that more active and interactive in these sites get the most attention. Lance Armstrong is another example, he has so many followers on twitter because of how active he is on the site and of course the fact that he is quite popular in the sports world helped too. What’s interesting is my survey also supports my research that basketball is the more popular sport on social media sites, which is what we’re going to look at now.

I will now be analyzing the results of the survey I created, which were very interesting. I got a total of 39 respondents. The first part I will be looking at is the responses to the question, Do you ever post on facebook or twitter about sport related topics? The results are below.

So this result did not surprise me because I sent this survey to my friends on facebook that are big sports fans. However I did send it to all my friends as well so a fair amount did say they do not really talk about sports on social media sites. So this shows that the majority of social media users do post about sports. Now I also asked them that if they do post about sports, how often do they do so. The answers to this were very much diverse, but the most seemed to be weekly to monthly. Obviously these were diverse because for most of them it depended on which sports were in seasons and what their favorite sports are, which we will look at next. Below are the results for the question, what sports do you follow or post about on facebook and twitter?

This is the result I was speaking of earlier that supports the research I found about the NBA. Even here, basketball comes out on top in the social media spectrum. This supports my theory that basketball is the number one social media sport in the U.S. because of how involved and interactive the players are on facebook and twitter. Before the research I did, this would have surprised me, but because of the research I did, this result didn’t surprise me at all. This was a really interesting find and supportive of my research. Another part of my survey I would like to note is about the question, do you send tweets or send comments on facebook to shows that use these sites to guide their show such as Sports Center, Audibles, ESPN First Take, NFL32, and Sports Nation? The results were all but three said they do not participate in these. This was to be expected because a small amount of people out of the whole country actually attempt to participate in these shows. However I believe that this fan and sports show interaction is on the rise because it’s a relatively new system and it allows fans to guide the show, which I think is brilliant. In my interview, John supports this through one of his responses which was, "

I think it’s so cool how Sports Nation uses social media to get constant updates from the players, also how they post questions for the fans to answer, so it’s a direct access for the fans to voice their opinions, and if a certain game was what they expected to be or if certain players didn’t live up to their certain potential, Sports Nation gives them a chance to express their feelings about it. just a variety of questions that allow sports fans to voice their reactions to games or any sports topics on television. I think that is a really cool interactive system."This shows that the idea of fans guiding ESPN shows is thought of greatly by sports fans and is used often, but has yet to catch on in a large scale. It was the same result for question seven which is Do you ever participate in the Sport Center polls that are online and aired on TV? 24 said no and 12 said yes, so again this shows a low amount of participation in the sports shows that use the fan’s view and opinions on the show. Question eight was, do you follow any sport athletes, sport teams, or sport analyst on twitter or are you facebook fans of any? Here are the results:

This shows that the majority of people do use social media as a bridge to the sports world. Even most of the people that considered themselves below average said that they do follow athletes, teams, and sports analyst. This means that most of the members on facebook and twitter follow these sports figures even when there not major sports fans. They follow them because of the easy access social media provides to these star figures. The next part of the survey is probably one of the more important parts. The question was, in relation top sports, do you view facebook and twitter as a platform to interaction with others about sports or as a source of information about sports? Both? Neither? Here were the results:

This result shows that the majority sees facebook and twitter’s purpose as a platform for interaction in relation to sports, which would explain the other part of my survey and research that suggested interaction with athletes is a big part of that interaction sports fans crave. This proves my claim that what fans value so much about the relationship between social media and sports is how this connection acts as a bridge that allows fans to interact and learn things about athletes and teams that normal television misses and lacks. And going back to some of my other research, information is another key component to the connection between social media and sports. Armstrong demonstrated how not only can you interact, but can also provide and gain information from social media sites. This is also how many people in the survey felt. Many viewed it as a source of valuable information where they can get instant information and news about sports. Another result I will point out are the answers to the question, do you have a time during the year when you post about sports on twitter or facebook more frequently? The answers all were fairly similar. Many said that playoffs are a time when their sports post would increase. The one answer that came up quite often was of course the Super Bowl. The World Series and NBA Finals also appeared several times. So the general consensus was that sports post occurred more often during post-season games, which makes sense.

And finally, I interviewed someone very in tuned and involved with the sports world. He is the student baseball team manager here at the university and he also works for the San Jose Giants organization. He has preferred to keep his name anonymous so we’ll call him John Morgan. John provided some great points about social media that I didn’t realize before and many of his answers supported some of earlier claims. The first response I thought was interesting was his answer to this question, how do you use social media in relation to sports? His answer was, “hmmm…I would say I use facebook primarily, to communicate with my friends about specific sporting events, things that happen throughout the day in the sporting world, and just any other hot topics about sports during that time.” This shows that John also uses social media primary for interaction with others about sports. So this supports the survey in that interaction with others is seen as the primary purpose and use of social media when talking about sports. This next response also supports this conclusion. Do you follow any players on twitter or are you a facebook fan of any players? Do you follow their social media activity? His response was, “uh yes I do, I follow several players…um I cover a few through facebook, they have a facebook page that I'm a fan of and follow, specifically Sergio Romo, Brian Wilson, they update you know whether it’s how they’re doing, how they’re feeling, whether or not they’re gonna be able to play or not for upcoming games, so it kind of gives you an all access look into the lives of these players. It’s just a different, more direct source than the TV.” This response coincides with the case study about Lance Armstrong in that he states exactly what Armstrong did in his three-week cycling event in Italy. He provided updates of how he was doing, feeling about the races, and voicing his opinion on topics. This is exactly what John said he enjoys doing and able to access, he likes being able to interact with the players and get direct updates from the actual individual, instead of hearing it from the TV. This is a great example of how social media acts as a bridge between players and fans. This connection and ability to interact with the actual athletes is what many sports fans crave. The last important quote I will point out is John’s response to this question, what gratification do you get from using social media as a platform for interaction and information for sports? His answer was, “huh…as far as gratification goes I’d say it just keeps me in the loop for certain things so I don’t like fall behind on some things. It absolutely keeps me updated, you know. It’s like when things reach the TV its already old news, that’s how fast social media is. Social media is like an instant source of information, I use the ESPN app on my facebook and you know, I get a message sent to me ever time something big happens in sports or when scores change in games.” This answer supports my claim that social media not only acts as a platform for interaction but acts also as a source of information. This response shows how sports fans rely on social media for sports information and that it has a big advantage over television, which is that people can acquire certain pieces of information from social media sites faster than television can air the information. This is why social media sites are starting to become a sought out source of information and news rather than the TV.

Conclusions and Reflections

This project has taught me far more than I originally thought it would. Through my research, surveys, and interviews, I truly now have a great understanding of the relationship between social media and sports. Going into this project, I thought that nothing would hugely surprise me, and I was absolutely wrong. The first thing that really surprised me was the case study with Lance Armstrong. I beforehand had thought that twitter was strictly a social interaction site. After analyzing the case study, I learned that it was much more. How Armstrong used twitter blows my preconceived notion sky high. He showed that twitter, and social networking sites in general, have the ability to be major sources of information for sports fans. John’s states in one of his responses the gratification he gets from using social media sites is how it is a instant source of information, which proves that social media is used in this way and that sports fans enjoy this characteristic. This is important because it shows that social media is not only a place to socialize, but is a rising provider of sports information. The other thing I learned that surprised me was my discovery that the NBA and its players dominate the social media world more so than any other sport in the U.S. This surprised me because I had originally thought the NFL was the leader. After some research, I had found the reason behind this find. The NBA players are the most active and interactive athletes in the U.S. and because of this they have more followers and fans in the social media spectrum. My survey supported this realization because basketball got the highest amount of selections for sport most followed and posted about in social media sites. The high social media activity and athlete-fan interaction in the NBA is why this is so. The interview supports this because John stated how he enjoys interacting with the athletes and getting direct updates from them as opposed to getting updates from sources like television. So, my final thoughs are the following, based off my research and findings, social media is no longer just a place to socialize, but is a strong source of instant information for sports and is slowly becoming a more used source to acquire sports updates and info. Secondly, the reason why social media has become such a huge part of the sports world is because it has allowed fans to do something that was beforehand not possible. It has allowed collective interaction between all members of the sports community. It provides fans the ability to interact not only with each other, but also with their favorite athletes. And it is for all these reasons that social media and sports complement one another in a way that their connection and relationship are making them stronger by expanding their possibilities and shortening their limits.