Hastagging the 2013 World Series Presentation
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Presentation from the Southwest Pop Culture Conference, February 2015
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Hastagging the 2013 World Series Presentation
- 1. Fans, Media and Organizations: Hashtagging the 2013 World Series
- 2. Pop Culture? • Sports are a major part of our culture • The sports fandom is different than many other genres
- 3. Twitter and Fandom • According to Twitter one of its most prominent uses is the discussion of events • Most of the research centers around live television shows and discusses how Twitter is used as a technology for facilitating fanaticism • During 2011 Twitter reported that major live events generated the most tweets per second, • Little research on how fans use Twitter during live sporting events
- 4. Hashtagging • Fans gravitate towards hashtags when watching live events • We see promotion of hashtags on television shows and commercials • During live sporting events the teams, broadcast partners and sponsors advocate the use of particular hashtags
- 5. Objective of Paper • Determine how baseball fans used Twitter during the World Series to see if it differs from fans of live television • Begin to examine the efficacy of organizations promoting hashtags
- 6. Research • This paper uses a quantitative approach to discover how audiences expressed fanaticism throughout the 2013 Major League Baseball World Series on Twitter • The the total number of tweets containing each hashtag from three hours before the selected game until noon the following day • Each game was divided into six distinct time periods for analysis
- 7. Top Hashtags
- 9. Results
- 10. Results
- 11. Results
- 12. Discussion • The results from this study indicate that baseball fans do not use Twitter in the same way has predicted by the existing literature • We can see this phenomenon by looking at the results game by game
- 13. Game 1
- 14. Game 2
- 15. Game 3
- 16. Game 4
- 17. Game 5
- 18. Game 6
- 19. 2014 Study • The results from this study are mixed because the research was conducted following the World Series • Limitations resulted from this: – Twitter archives meant no content analysis – Only tracking fans who used a hashtag – No idea how the hashtags evolved • Live study
Editor's Notes
- Sports become part of a fan’s identity, and thus a fan constantly seeks out information about his or her favorite organizations and players. As Summers and Morgan (2008) explain, “This constant demand and supply of information, competition and excitement breeds heroes, villains, celebrities and superstars. Indeed, intrinsic to this commercialization of sport is the creation of the ‘sport celebrity’ as a product in his or her own right” (p. 176). As a result, this level of interest brings unfettered hero worship and idolization of sports stars and sports organizations by fans. This fanaticism also means that the fans will quickly criticize and vilify athletes and organizations that do not live up to their expectations (Summers & Morgan, 2008). Further, Summers and Morgan (2008) found that fans often idealize their sport of choice and become unnaturally attached with a strong emotional element to this sport
- Amongst the most prominent uses of Twitter is in formulating a virtual conversation regarding live televised events. “Twitter’s own statistics for 2011, for example, list major entertainment spectacles (the MTV Music Awards, the BET Awards) and sports matches (the UEFA Champions League final, the FIFA Women’s World Cup final) amongst the events generating the most tweets per second during the year (Twitter, 2011)” (Highfield, T. et. al 2013. p. 1). In particular, during these live events, Twitter is used as a backchannel to the live event; in other words fans recreate the live experience over Twitter by reacting instantaneously to what is happening live on television. Individuals use Twitter to offer commentary and to make sense of what they are seeing on the television, especially in the case of Eurovision where European countries dress up in costumes and compete in song and dance routines (Highfield, T. et al., 2013). To stay involved in the action, the fans, gravitate towards hashtags, so they can follow only the tweets of other fans watching the same event, allowing a real dialog to emerge between fans resulting in “group mentality form[ing] either in favor or against an event in ways that does not happen in face-to-face communication” (Segerberg, A & Bennett, W.L, 2011, p.197). TV shows, sporting events, conferences
- Bruns and Burgess (2011, p. 4) further note, the network of Twitter users which is formed from this shared communicative practice must be understood as separate from follower/followee networks. At the same time, the two network layers overlap: tweets marked with a specific hashtag will be visible both to the user’s established followers, and to anyone else following the hashtag conversation there is a key limitation as noted by Highfield, T, and et. al (2013) in that there is no way to ensure that the fans will adopt a hashtag. Further, there is the real risk that multiple hashtags will be adopted and the fans will be overwhelmed by the choices on hashtags to view.
- analyzes the frequency and pattern of use of the top-eight Twitter hashtags for each game. Hashtags were chosen because they are used on Twitter much like a search engine. Fans can use them at the end of a tweet to join a conversation, and by using Twitter or any Twitter reader, users can search for individual Tweets just using the particular hashtag. Such a wide time frame was chosen because the game started after 8pm on the east coast and many games ended well after midnight on the east coast. : pregame, first half of game, second half of game, post-game (which extended until 3 am eastern time), overnight (which extended until 8am eastern time), and next day (which extended until noon eastern the next day).
- First thing to note is that only one was a promoted hashtag. In addition to the foregoing, the researcher also added the hashtag #mlbnetwork to the analysis since it is the official hashtag of the MLB network which is owned by Major League Baseball and had daily twenty-four hour coverage of the World Series. It was speculated that when unusual calls were made, fans would tune into MLB network or engage with them on Twitter to gain understanding.
- The nine hashtags revealed 25,585 tweets over the observed time periods for the six World Series games. Over the course of the six games, the number of tweets per game was fairly similar, with a slight dip for game 4, a particularly slow and low-scoring game.
- Differences in tweet activity appear, however, when one tracks at what times during each game that individuals are tweeting. Although the literature suggests that fans will tweet using a hashtag during an event to find a common group of fans to recreate the live experience, the results suggest that fans during As the following graph shows, the largest number of tweets always took place pre-game and not during the game. the 2013 World Series only used hashtags during games when confusing plays or calls were made or once it was clear that the Red Sox had won the Series.
- ,= the most popular hashtag across all the games was simply gamex (x being the game number). The promoted hashtag #mlbonfox and #mlbnetwork were used irregularly and not any more frequently than fan created hashtags. Since it is important to determine that these results are not expected by chance alone, the chi-square statistical test was applied. (Baxter, L.A., and Babbie, E., 2003). In all cases, the chi-square test leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis that the frequency of tweets is no different than what would have occurred under the assumption of independence (See Appendix). By rejecting the null hypothesis the results indicate that there is a relationship between the timing of the tweets and the hashtags chosen and/or the sentiments expressed by the tweets and the hashtags chosen. In addition, the contingency coefficient and Cramer’s V (reported in the table that follows), both of which are measures derived from the chi-square statistic indicate that the degree of association between the frequency of tweets by time period and hastags chosen is about mid-level, falling in the range of 0.40 - 0.47 on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0.
- There are several explanations for this result. First, the previous work dealt with one-time events like Eurovision, and not an event like the World Series; thus fanaticism and the close feelings fans have with their teams and the sport do not exist in those events (Hopson and Orbe, 2007; Summers and Morgan, 2008). Eurovision, is a once-yearly event that is difficult to make sense of, and those who watch it, watch from home and find fellow fans online. In baseball, fans already exist and it is probable that “true” fans already have people they watch games with or friends with whom they text or talk to during the game, so they are less likely to go to Twitter unless something truly unexpected happens. Second, baseball is different than other sports in that each game is long, and often considered boring by non-fans; thus the casual tweeter is only active when checking in pre or post game or when something confusing or exciting happens, which meshes with the Highfield, T. et., al (2013) results.
- For game 1 the majority of the tweets occurred during the pregame period and were fans sharing their excitement that the series was ready to start. This game had a fair amount of #BosVsSTL tweets during the game because Boston scored five runs off of the Cardinal’s ace Adam Wainwright in the first two innings; thus they went on Twitter to show their fanaticism and belief that if they could beat up on the Cardinals ace there was no way they would lose the series. There were also a fair amount of tweets on the #STLvsBOS hashtag because during the game Cardinals manager Mike Matheny accused Red Sox pitcher John Lester of doctoring the ball and Cardinal fans went on Twitter using the #STLvsBOS hashtag supporting their manager’s claim. This game also shows an example of the Fox broadcast making good use of Twitter by asking fans to chime in on the Lester situation using the hashtag mlbonfox. As a result, the data show that fans responded during both the first and second half of the game due to this controversy.
- In game two the Cardinals won 4-2 and as the tweets suggested, all the runs were scored late in the game. As in game 1, the majority of the tweets occurred pre-game. Once again, we can observe a spike in the #mlbonfox tweets during the first and second half of the game in response to their posing a question that drew fans to use their hashtag during the game. To some extent, Fox’s success in using this question of the game goes against the analysis of Highfield, T. et al (2013) who predicted a media outlet could not direct fans to a particular outlet, but it does not really reject their analysis because Fox’s goal was one tweet, not to form a community around a set of tweets. As in game 1, when the Cardinals runs were scored and the team went up 4-0, tweets were observed on the #STLvsBOS hashtag. When David Ortiz hit a 2-run homerun in the 9th inning off of Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal, the surge of tweets on #BosVsSTL occurred. The data continues to suggest that the average fan who is not rooting for either the Cardinals or Red Sox probably chose to tweet pre and post-game using the #ws or #gamex hashtag to discuss how excited they were about the upcoming game and then how it had lived up to their expectations.
- Game 3 was one of the more controversial World Series games in recent memory as it ended on a rarely used obstruction call. The game was tied 4-4 heading into the 9th inning and the Cardinals won on a throw to third base which careened off of Cardinal Allen Craig who was attempting to slide back into the base. The umpire ruled that the Red Sox third baseman got in the way of Allen Craig standing up and running home and thus Allen Craig would have scored but for the obstruction, and the game ended 5-4. As a result of the slow start and closeness of the game, there is not much tweet activity during the game, but there are a large number of tweets during the post-game, overnight and next morning periods across nearly all the hashtags. This is clearly consistent with the analysis of Highfield, T. et., al (2013). Since most diehard fans had never seen an obstruction call, let alone one that ended a game, not surprisingly, they sought out an online-community to look for answers to make sense of the unknown. =
- This game featured the Cardinals going out to a 2-0 lead and the Red Sox starter Clay Buckholtz leaving the game early with an injury. The Red Sox then held the Cardinals scoreless and scored 4 runs to take the lead. The game ended with the Red Sox picking Kolton Wong off second base with Carlos Beltran, the potential tying-run for ST. Louis, at bat. These developments are reflected in the use of the #BosVsSTL hashtag during the second half of the game.
- In Game 5, the Red Sox and Cardinals played a very close low-scoring game which is reflected in the Twitter output. The Red Sox won the game 3-1. ‘’ The Cardinal’s best pitcher Adam Wainwright gave up a run in the first which is reflected in the #BosVsSTL tweets. Matt Holiday of the Cardinals then tied the game with a home run in the 4th inning that is reflected by the #STLvsBOS tweets. The number of tweets on this hashtag is likely fewer than expected given that the Cardinals were behind in the series and the previous game had ended on a sour note that left many Cardinal fans disgruntled. Finally, when Wainwright gave up two runs in the 7th inning, Boston fans responded on the #BOSVsSTL hashtag and casual fans responded on the #ws hashtag showing their excitement that Boston was one game away from winning the World Series. It is important to note that Boston was probably the favorite for the casual fan due to the remorse felt for the Boston Marathon bombing and the heart-felt responses of the Boston players.
- From the beginning of this game there was a lot of excitement on Twitter. When Boston went up 6-0 early, it was clear to many that the Series was over. What was unusualin game 6, however, was that the Cardinal fans seemed to be tweeting more than Boston fans, especially under the #12in13 hashtag during the second half of the game. Perhaps the use of the #12in13 hashtag by Cardinal fans on Twitter once the Cardinals were clearly going to lose the game was a sign of support for the team and their success over the year. The fans were showing that they would remain Cardinal fans, an inference consistent with the work of Hopson and Orbe, (2007) and that they still viewed the Cardinals as their heroes despite the disappointment, an inference consistent with the work of Summers and Morgan (2008). There is not much activity on the Boston hashtags suggesting that they were not using Twitter as a replacement for the live experience as Highfield, T. et al (2013), rather they were watching and (now) celebrating with other Boston fans in real life.
- Need to understand how hashtags evolve. Beast mode Skittles
- Every tweet sent under the 23 search terms was archived using tweet archiver. Used popular terminology from ALCS and NLCS and crowdsourcing. Generated over 5M tweets. Cull out data not baseball related and duplicated. Then xan watch how hastags evolve and also see if tweeting still happens during the game, but don’t need to create a hashtag community.