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.
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