Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Relationship Between British Columbian Athletes and Their Fans Through the Communication of Twitter



The Twitter website has impacted the cyberspace world in a significant way (Pegoraro, 2010; Kassing and Sanderson, 2010; Hambrick et al., 2010). Through Twitter, the fans feel more connected to their sports heroes because instead of reading reports from the newspaper or hearing a television program such as Sports Centre, the fans are able to read an athletes’ commentary within an hour of the game being completed (Pegoraro, 2010; Hambrick et al., 2010). Twitter is a communication website where you can send messages with 140 characters or less (Pegoraro, 2010; Kassing and Sanderson, 2010; Hambrick et al., 2010). Twitter has made the average sports fan feel more connected to their favorite player, media member or team. Fans feel closer to their sports icons because fans feel like they have a more personal connection with the athletes.
Bloch (2002) states that e-mail aids communication between second language students and their teachers at the university level. In a similar way, Twitter has changed the relationship between professional athletes and their fans. Twitter was found to be useful to bring fans and players closer together (Pegoraro, 2010; Kassing and Sanderson, 2010; Hambrick et al., 2010). Pegoraro (2010) indicated that NFL players and Pro golfers seem to tweet the most. In contrast, NHL players were not well represented. Pegoraro, (2010) illustrated athletes’ use of Twitter to talk about their personal lives and was a great tool for fan-athlete interaction. Kassing and Sanderson (2010) dissected what athletes said during a major cycling event. The cyclists provided commentary and opinions that improved the event for the fans. Hambrick et al (2010) viewed 2,000 tweets from professional athletes and placed them into six categories. The six categories are: interaction, Diversion, Information Sharing, Fanship, Content and promotion. The authors of the study found that the majority of the tweets were interactive and very few were Promotional.  All three studies demonstrated an improved relationship between fans and athletes through the use of Twitter.
Methodology
While researchers have looked at Twitter interactions between athletes and their fans in a variety of places throughout the world, little research has looked at this issue in British Columbia. I planned to answer the question of whether or not there are any differences in B.C. athletes’ use of Twitter compared to other professional athletes? The differences were examined when I looked at data from previous articles and compared them to tweets from British Columbia athletes. The site that I used to collect the data was the actual Twitter site (twitter.com). I picked five B.C. athletes that are moderate to high users of Twitter and recorded the tweets from each athlete’s profile page. This will give me the data for the study which I can compare the tweets with Hambrick’s data. For the research, I collected twenty tweets from each athlete. I did a textual analysis on the tweets to determine any patterns. From this I tried to see if there were any similarities between B.C. athletes to the rest of the athletes that tweet in the previous studies.
For my study I wanted to get athletes from a variety of sports and with different experience levels. After selecting a number of B.C. born athletes, I examined their Twitter accounts to make sure they tweeted enough to make a representative sample sufficient for analysis. I came up with three NHL players (Derek Grant, Kyle Turris and Brendan Morrison) one NBA player (Steve Nash) and one Pro golfer (Adam Hadwin). I have a good cross section with these five athletes. Three are relatively new professionals (Grant, Turris and Hadwin), one other, Morrison, is a long time pro, and the other, Nash, is recognized around the world as being one of the best in his sport. The primary sources of data were the Twitter accounts for my five athletes. The tweets were examined then placed into one of six categories. I analyzed the data using the same categories Hambrick et, al. used. Having the same categories as in previous studies gave me a platform to base my results on. 
Results
The tweets were classified into six categories. The category that had the most tweets by my five athletes was Diversion. These tweets included anything that was not sports related that was directed at all of the athletes’ Twitter followers. For instance, when Brendan Morrison from the Chicago Blackhawks tweets “First home cooked meal in 6 weeks. Can't beat wild pacific salmon!! @Tofino_SWC”, this is Diversion because having a home cooked meal has nothing to do with sports.  The category with the second most tweets that athletes did was with Fanship.  Fanship is when an athlete tweets words of encouragement or congratulations directed at the player, organization or league that is not connected to their own sport. For example, Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns tweeted “Anybody hear anything new about Fabrice Muamba's condition?” Nash is referring to an incident with a Bolton soccer player who had a heart attack during an FA Cup match. Nash was voicing his concern for the 23 year-old athlete. Information Sharing was the third most common reason for the athletes to tweet. Information Sharing is when athletes tell their fans about how they are feeling about their performance or their own teams’ play related to their particular sport. Personally, I thought Information Sharing would be the most common reason the athletes would tweet.  Adam Hadwin of the Professional Golf Association (PGA) demonstrates Information Sharing with the tweet “Headed to houston then driving to lafeyette. Chitimacha louisiana open, then shell houston monday. Last chance to get into masters field!” Hadwin was telling his Twitter followers his PGA schedule. He is ultimately trying to qualify for the Masters at Augusta National, arguably, the most prestigious tournament on the PGA tour. Even though this could be a Promotional tweet, I believe it is an Information Sharing tweet because Hadwin is really telling his followers his upcoming schedule. He is not telling his followers to watch the Masters on CBS. Tied with Information Sharing with 11% of the tweets was Promotion. The tweet fell into the Promotional category if it was advertising a certain event coming up. This could include anything from a television show being shown at the current time or an event where the fan has to purchase a ticket to attend an event.


Interaction only produced 9% of the tweets from this study. To be defined as an interactive tweet it had to be directed at one of the writers’ followers. For the athlete to make it Interactive, all the athlete needed to do was include the “@” sign to confirm the fans’ Twitter identification. The fact that it is Interactive gets the fans to communicate to the athlete directly. This is fun because it allows fans to feel closer to famous athletes.
The least number of tweets the athletes tweeted was Content. It was a Content tweet if the athlete attached a link within that tweet. In that link could be anything from an interesting article from a local newspaper or a picture of what that athlete had for lunch that day.

Figure 1 Categorization of tweets

Inter-active
Diver-sion
Content
Information Sharing
Fanship
Promo-tional
Adam Hadwin
5
3
1
8
3
0
Steve Nash
2
3
0
2
8
5
Derek Grant
1
7
0
0
8
4
Kyle Turris
1
10
5
0
3
2
Brendan Morrison
0
14
1
0
3
2

Conclusion
The results I found were very interesting. I expected to see Information Sharing tweets  represented by a higher percentage because I expected the athletes to focus on their professional status as this is the reason why they have a large number of followers. Twitter is an appropriate tool for celebrities and athletes to connect with fans. For example, Twitter is the place where fans want to hear more about their favorite athletes sooner than they would in the pre-Twitter era. Therefore, I think it’s ironic that more of the tweets weren’t Information Sharing.
By comparison, the research of Hambrick et al. came out similar in a couple categories (Interaction and Information Sharing) but vastly different in the amount of Fanship tweets. This could be because of the time of year that my study was done. For example, Derek Grant of the Ottawa Senators tweeted “Congrats Spartan Basketball!!! #unrealgame #B1G #wow”.  Derek is giving a shout out to his alma mater Michigan State after they defeated Ohio State in the Big Ten Conference basketball Championship which is a basketball tournament that leads into March Madness. March Madness is an annual basketball tournament that is watched religiously across the United States. Therefore, most of my athletes like Derek were giving words of encouragement to their former schools. Most of my Fanship tweets were about March Madness as the tournament was going on at the time of data collection.
My results from my research indicate that British Columbian athletes’ tweets are fairly different from the athletes studied by Hambrick et al. There was much less Interaction with my athletes compared to Hambrick et al., however, they found that Fanship was a small contributor to their research. In contrast, Fanship tweets had 27% percent of my data representing the second most number of tweets. I think a lot of the reason for the different results between the two studies is because the time of year and the popularity of the athletes chosen by Hambrick et al. and the athletes I chose. For example, the athletes that Hambrick et al. chose are not only well known in North America but also they’re well known around the world. In my study, only Steve Nash is well known globally. Even though my study doesn’t have a big impact on life in the big scheme of things, it is interesting to observe where technology is taking us. It also has some limitations. My study was over a brief period of time and was limited to five athletes.  I’m quite confident I would have seen different results at different times of the year for example when players are in the off-season. 





Bibliography



Bloch, J. (2002) Student/teacher Interaction Via Email: The Social Context of Internet Discourse,

Journal Of Second Language Writing, 11(2), 117 – 134, doi:10.1016/S1060-3743(02)00064-4


Hambrick, M., Simmons, J.,  Greenhalgh, G. and Greenwell C. (2010)  Understanding
Professional Athletes' Use of Twitter: A Content Analysis of Athlete Tweets, International Journal of Sport Communication, 3, 454 -471. url: http://www.humankinetics.com.proxy.ufv.ca:2048/IJSC/journalAbout.cfm

Kassing, J. and Sanderson, J. (2010) Fan-Athlete Interaction and Twitter Tweeting Through the
Giro: A Case Study. International Journal of Sport Communication, 3, 113 – 128. url: http://www.humankinetics.com.proxy.ufv.ca:2048/IJSC/journalAbout.cfm

Pegoraro, A (2010) Look who’s Talking - Athletes on Twitter: A Case Study. International Journal
of Sport Communication, 3, 501 – 514. url: http://www.humankinetics.com.proxy.ufv.ca:2048/IJSC/journalAbout.cfm

https://twitter.com/#!/7bmo

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