An Internet-based survey was posted on the Twitter feed of a retired female athlete to ascertain the demographics, uses, and gratifications of her feed’s followers. Analysis of the data revealed that followers were predominantly White, affluent, educated, and older than prior research into online audiences has shown. The perception of the athlete as being an expert at her sport was the most salient reason reported to follow the Twitter feed, followed by affinity for the athlete’s writing style. Analysis of variance uncovered 5 significant differences in item salience between male and female followers, with women more likely to use this Twitter feed because of affinity for the athlete and men more likely to use it because of perception of the athlete as physically attractive. Factor analysis uncovered 3 dimensions of gratification: an organic fandom factor, a functional fandom factor, and an interactivity factor.

An Internet-based survey was posted on the Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of 1 predominantly social and 1 predominantly parasocial athlete to ascertain the similarities and differences between their follower sets in terms of parasocial interaction development and follower motivations. Analysis of the data revealed a sense of heightened interpersonal closeness based on the interaction style of the athlete. While followers of the social athlete were driven by interpersonal constructs, followers of the parasocial athlete relied more on media conventions in their interaction patterns. To understand follower motivations, exploratory factor analyses were conducted for both follower sets. For followers of the social athlete, most of the interactivity, information-gathering, personality, and entertainment items loaded together. Unlike followers of the social athlete, fanship and community items loaded alongside information-gathering items for followers of the parasocial athlete. The implications of these and other findings are discussed further.

Sport organizations, teams, and athletes are growing constituencies that use socialmedia platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to engage in dialogue with their respective audiences. The purpose of this study was to examine Twitter hashtag use during a major sporting event. Specifically, this study analyzed #WorldSeries during the 2011 World Series. The study employed a content-analysis methodology to determine who was using the hashtag and how it was being used. Using systematic sampling, 1,450 tweets were analyzed. The results demonstrated that #WorldSeries was being used predominantly by laypersons to express fanship, as well as interactivity. When individuals were being interactive with this hashtag, they were doing so mainly with MLB/league officials and other laypersons. Most of these interactive tweets were also expressions of fanship. The implications of these findings are discussed further.

As social media provide athletic departments and their constituents with an additional point of engagement with their fans, it is important to understand the social media audience. However, despite the growth of social media use among collegiate athletic departments, coaches, and teams, relatively little is known about the individuals who are utilizing various social media forums. This study was the first to attempt to understand why college sport fans engage in sport-focused social media use, with a theoretical grounding in uses and gratifications. Utilizing a survey of student fans from a large Division 1 institution, the results suggest that there is a relatively low level of social media participation among college sport fans in relation to official Twitter and Facebook feeds of the team, and a surprising prevalence of traditional media usage for informational purposes. Factor analysis reveals dimensions of gratification for social media use include content creation as an identifiable factor. These and other findings are discussed.

Prior research into the portrayal of females in sport media has demonstrated that females are given less written coverage than males (e.g., Fink & Kensicki, 2002), and that the coverage given is more sexual in nature (Hardin, Lynn, & Walsdorf, 2005). Internet-based sports blogs have become both an alternative and a competitor to traditional sport media (Fleming, 2008; Hardin & Zhong, 2009; King, 2009). As such, it becomes necessary to examine the portrayal of females in sports blogs, to compare the medium’s content to traditional forms of sport media, and to establish a baseline for future research. Utilizing content analysis of the 10 most popular sports blogs, the study discovered that males received significantly more photographic coverage in sports blogs than did females, and that female portrayals were far more likely to be sexually suggestive in nature. These and other findings are discussed, and recommendations for future studies are included.