National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) coaches are among the most visible leaders on campuses. With recent calls for diversity efforts, coaches are faced with decisions regarding supporting or promoting their teams’ and athletes’ racial justice actions on team social media accounts. However, sport information staff often manage the team’s social media strategy and may not reflect the coaches’ goals. Framed by the theory of racialized organizations, we examined NCAA coaches’ attitudes toward their athletic department’s role in social media activism on their team pages. We surveyed 174 coaches across divisions and investigated differences based on coaches’ gender, race, and division. Findings suggest that coaches supported activism but were less confident in the role of the athletic department in posting about racial justice on team accounts. Interpreting results through the theory of racialized organizations, coaches, specifically White coaches, may view their college athletic departments as race-neutral organizations. There is opportunity for those managing team platforms to further promote social justice messaging to demonstrate organizational support.

There is a rise in athletes and sports organizations utilizing social media activism to discuss social injustices. Social media staff are tasked with communicating such messages, often with little insight into how it impacts their athletes. Empirical research is necessary to understand the perspectives of athletes to inform best practices for the staff. The purpose of this study was to assess college student-athletes’ perceptions of their athletic departments’ involvement in promoting racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement on social media. We surveyed 273 student-athletes from 40 universities for their perspectives. Quantitatively, we explored four factors: affective responses to the posts, perceived conflict, the role of the athletic department in using social media to discuss the topic, and the perceived qualifications of the athletic department to post about the topic. MANOVA revealed Black student-athletes were significantly more likely to believe that it was the athletic department’s role to address racial justice than their non-Black counterparts, with no significant differences in the other three factors. Qualitatively, student-athletes’ reactions were classified into three themes: social activism communication strategy, strategies to develop race conscious culture, and challenges to social media activism. Athletic department staff can utilize the findings to implement a strategy.

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