The survey of 398 people found that most get sports information from Twitter, and many check social media while watching games. However, more respondents disagreed than agreed that social media is better than TV for sports news. As social media continues growing in influence, teams must understand fans' social media use to better target them. Millennials in particular impact sports through high social media engagement, and help others become fans via social sharing. The shift to covering athletes' personal lives shows social media's changing role in sports reporting and fan interaction.

1. Sports and Social Media:
The Impact of social media on today’s sporting world
James Hall
Seattle University
12/9/2015

2. Introduction:
Over the past 20 years, the sports world has been introduced to a whole new version of
reporting. What started on television with the introduction of ESPN reporting sporting news has
developed into a much different medium. Social media has allowed for teams and athletes to
give up to the second updates that completely changed the way sports were covered. With the
introduction of social media into the sporting world, a whole new realm was added to both sports
reporting as well as player to fan interaction. Before, players and fans had very communication
on personal level as interviews and most player interaction was done through news outlets. By
way of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, the interaction completely changed. As
athletes and teams began to create Twitter handles and pages on Facebook, fans were given the
ability to follow them directly and have a dialogue unlike ever before. This however brought a
whole new realm of coverage that was once unavailable before social media. Athletes personal
lives became a large focal point of news coverage as sports coverage began to switch from
highlights and scores to who is dating who and which athletes visited which place. This was the
reason behind looking into the impact of social media in sports. The question I wanted to
explore was how social media has changed the way we interact with athletes as well as the
impact it has had in what news the public finds more important.
Abstract:
The goal of this study is to explore the impact of social media on sports. More
specifically digging deeper into the question how has social media impacted the way we view
and interact with athletes and teams? This study will investigate the different ways in which a
person can interact with an athlete or team on social media and analyze whether or not that
effects the way we view or perceive that certain athlete or team. If this study were to take place,

3. focus groups, surveys, and mock tweets or posts directed towards specific athletes would be
used.
Framing
One of the biggest driving forces behind my research question was the idea of framing in
social media news releases. While outlets such as ESPN and Bleacher Report still cover sports
news in terms of scores and highlights, they have added a whole new dimension to their news
coverage. As athletes personal lives have become more and more of a focal point for fans,
television outlets have added a dimension that was once not possible without the social media
influence. A recent example of this was Tim Tebow’s recent break up with his girlfriend. The
news came at the same time as a Thursday night football game between the Bills and the Patriots.
The game received 115k tweets within the first hour while the Tim Tebow breakup, released at
the same time as the game, received over 200k tweets within the first hour. This shows how as
social media continues to rise, so does the shift in sporting coverage through the online
community.
The first article written by Anthony DiMoro deals with social media’s growing impact on
today’s sports culture. His article dives into the rise of social media in the sporting world over
the past twenty years and how it has become such a prominent fixture in not only the way the
public watches sports, but in the way they interact with players and teams. Almost every team,
league, and athlete out there today has an account on the major social media networks
(Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) that is active where a fan can interact in a multitude of ways.
Using his personal twitter account, DiMoro ran a poll on Twitter which asked whether or
not an athletes social media behavior impacts a person or doesn’t. Through his findings, he

4. found that the biggest deters for a fan were seeing offensive language or derogatory statements in
posts or tweets. Others felt as though the positive impact to social media behavior was an athlete
who consistently interacted and showed interest with the fans. It is a double edged sword that
can sometimes make or break an athlete’s popularity based on their social media presence.
From a team standpoint, DiMoro focused on the ability for teams to talk directly with
fans and create a dialogue through social media that had not been possible in recent years. “It’s a
powerful source for getting news, engaging in topical discussions and empowering brands. (URL
1)” Utilizing strategies such as “in game hashtags,” a team can create an added dimension to the
viewing experience of a sporting event. If used correctly, the possibilities or the team to fan
interaction on social media are endless.
In the second article, author Sam Laird ran polls and used statistics to help show the
change seen through the impact of social media on sports. With the help of numerous
infographics, Laird breaks down the immediate effect that social media has had when viewing
sports. Through his findings, he saw that “80% of sports fans monitor social media sites while
watching games on TV, and more than 60% do so while watching or attending live events. (URL
2)” Social media and sports coincide in today’s society and this new style of viewing is here to
stay, so keeping updated and interacting is key for any sports team or athlete.
Within the infographic, Laird utilized real life anecdotes and statistics from athletes,
teams, and fans alike on social media to help highlight the positive and negative impacts that
come along with being active on social media. An example of the negative side he gave dealt
with Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson who tweeted negatively about a member of
the Chiefs coaching staff. After a few heated online altercations between himself and the fans,

5. he was fined $25,000 and later released from the team. A positive example of social media
interaction came from Tiger Woods after his cheating scandal. After hosting a question and
answer via his Twitter page and allowing fans to hear the story from his perspective, he received
multiple tweets directed at him from fans wishing him the best and forgiving him for his
previous wrongdoings. Both of these instances wouldn’t have been made possible without the
help of social media and shed light on the dangers and advantages of being present on social
media as an athlete.
In Josh Robinson’s article, millennials are focused on and their impact on sports social
media presence. In an age where people under the age of 25 dominate the social media scene, it
is easy to see how they have such a major impact on the social media side of sports (Robinson).
Within his research, Robinson found that there was a direct relationship between those that are
active on social media and their dedication to the specific team or athlete. “The more they use
social media to engage with their passions, the more of a fan they become…and the more of a
fan they become, the more they use social media to help that fanship. (Robinson)” This
correlation is important in not only keeping the individual a fan, but as that fan continues to post
about a certain player or team, their followers see the activity and could begin their own fanship
as a result.
In Brandi Watkins and Regina Lewis’ article, they focus on what it means to start a
dialogue between athletes and fans on Twitter. Historically, dialogue has been the result of
direct interaction between people, but as we begin to switch into a digital age, this definition has
can take many different shapes. To do this study, they employed a quantitative content analysis
of 990 tweets from 22 athletes and coded these tweets based on dialogic principles, frequency of
Twitter activity, and user interaction (Smith and Lewis).

6. These two authors argue in their review that dialogue between athletes and fans doesn’t
always have to take the shape of a direct message or replying to a comment. Their thinking was
that when a fan “favorites” or “retweets” a tweet presented by an athlete, they are starting a new
style of dialogue by reaching out to this athlete and showing appreciation for what they are
saying. It is in this that they came to the conclusion that social media dialogue has to take a
different shape from the normal definition of dialogue and expand to include structural features
beyond direct messages and replies. This is an intriguing take on social media interaction
because it allows for a whole new set of questions and findings to be uncovered when it comes to
athlete and fan interactivity on social media.
Tim Highfield, Stephen Harrington, and Axel Bruns research the role of twitter during
major sporting events and the importance it has in keeping fans engaged and included throughout
a broadcast. In their discoveries, they found that 87% of every major sporting event since 2012
has been paired with a hashtag for fans to use when tweeting about the said event (Highfield).
This hashtag method is not only helpful to create a dialogue between fans, but it also shows the
popularity of the event and how many people were tuned in by the frequency of tweets using the
hashtag. To do their study, they utilized information from the 2014 FIFA World Cup and
analyzed how many people were engaged in the matches through Twitter and how many times
certain players or teams were mentioned.
Results
The survey created by our strategic communication research firm saw 398 people
participate. Of those 398 participants, 68% percent were between the ages of 18-24 and 75%

7. were female. Within this group, we saw about two thirds of the population from the survey
answered the questions we put forward.
The first question of the sports and social media section of the survey asked whether or
not a person would consider following sports on social media. 59% of those who chose to
respond said they would while 41 percent said they would not. Our second question dealt with
the frequency in which a person interacts with an athlete or sports team on social media. The
possible answers for this question were sometimes, never, and often. These statistics are
represented in the graph below.
Table 1: Of the 286 that responded, 72% said they never do, 23% said they sometimes do, and
5% said they do often. (Strategic Communications Survey)
Respondents
Never
Sometimes
Often

8. The third question we examined was whether or not social media was a better source for
covering sporting news than television. This section saw 286 participants answer, but 164 of
that group chose neutral. The graph below highlights the results.
Table 2: 57% neutral, 4% strongly agreed, 11% agreed, 20% disagreed, and 8% strongly
disagreed. (Strategic Communications Survey)
The final question from our section was a poll which asked participants to rank which
social media site they felt was the best for receiving sports information on a scale of 1-5 (1 being
best and 5 being worst). The results are presented in the graph below.
Television vs Social Media
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
Strongly Disagree

9. Table 3: Twitter 55%, Facebook 20%, Instagram 9%, YouTube 8%, Snapchat 8% (Strategic
Communications Survey)
Discussion
With the research question revolving around the effect of social media on sports, it was
tough to make generalizations as a result of this survey. While the sample size from our survey
nearly doubled what we had hoped for, nearly half of the participants that took our survey
skipped the question involving sports and social media. Those that did participate, however,
helped make sense of the different ways in which sports and social media interact, and the effects
that social media has had over the way we view sports. The poll question was probably the
biggest influence to the research because it laid out how each individual respondent felt about
each social media site. It was not surprising that Twitter was the rated as the best site for sports
information because it is so up to the minute and easy to access, but I was surprised by how
many people rated it as the worst source for information. Whether this population was confused
Social Media Sites
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Snapchat

10. by the question or generally felt that way about the site, it would interesting to do some follow
up interviewing to that group and see exactly why they voted that way.
The other question in which results came as a surprise was the one which talked about the
effectiveness of getting information through social media as opposed to television. While many
chose to answer “neutral” to the question, of those that did answer, almost two times as many
people disagreed with the claim that social media was a more effective means of getting sports
information instead of television. With the convenience and instant, up to date information that
social media can provide via Twitter and Facebook, I would have thought that the numbers
would have been much different. In research done by Josh Robinson involving millennials and
social media, he got much different results. He found through his own research that when people
under the age of 25 are watching a sporting event on TV, 85% will check their social media
feeds at least once during the span of the game. Within his research, however, sports fans were
specifically targeted which could have led to his numbers being much higher than the ones found
from my research.
While I was able to gather a general consensus from the information gathered, there were
a few factors within the research that I would have changed in order to make my results not only
more accurate, but also more helpful for real world application. Having questions that revolve
around such a specific topic, it was tough for people who are not sports fans to answer the
questions in an honest a truly opinionated way. The four questions in the survey around sports
were some of the most skipped questions within the survey, which led me to believe that many
people that took the survey were either not involved in social media or did not have any
affiliation with sports. If more time was allocated to this research, it would have been nice to
survey a population who did have an interest in sports specifically. If the data was gathered this

11. way there would have been a more accurate representation on how fans utilize social media and
where they get their information from. This could then be used by teams or sports websites to
help know where and how to better target their fanbases.
Conclusion
Overall, as social media continues to affiliate itself with sports, teams and athletes need to
understand the importance of interacting and keeping up with their social media pages. With
sports media outlets not only covering scores and highlights but also personal lives, the shift in
news is drastically changing. Having a presence on social media doesn’t only improve players or
teams popularity, but it creates a more intimate feel that can improve fan experience when
visiting these sites. As millennials continue to turn to social media, teams and players have to
target not only the sites that fans are on, but also when they are on these sites.

12. Bibliography:
(URL 1) DiMoro, Anthony. "The Growing Impact of Social Media on Today's Sports Culture."
Forbes, 2 July 2015. Web.
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonydimoro/2015/07/02/the-growing-impact-of-social-media-
on-todays-sports-culture/3/>.
(URL 2) Laird, Sam. "How Social Media Is Changing Sports." Mashable. 26 Apr. 2014. Web.
<http://mashable.com/2012/04/27/sports-social-media-2/#C0EjfOM1igqQ>.
Highfield, Tim (2013). "Twitter As A Technology For Fandom." Information, Communication,
and Society, 16(3), 315-39.
Watkins, Brandi, & Lewis, Regina (2014). “Initiating dialogue on social media: An investigation
of athletes’ use of dialogic principles and structural features of Twitter.” Public Relations
Review, 40(5), 853-855.
Vann, Portia (2014). "Changing the Game: The Role of Social Media in Overcoming Old
Media's Attention Deficit Toward Women's Sport." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media,
58.3, 438-55.
Robinson, Josh (2014). "Sports Fans, Social Media, and The Millenial." Loughborough
University, Journal 10.2, 201-20.