Individuals’ Motivations and Engagement With Paralympic Content on Social Media: A Longitudinal Analysis Across Six Summer and Winter Games

Abstract

Despite the recent growth in Paralympic sport programming and viewership on social media, there remains a limited understanding of social media users’ motivations for consuming and engaging with Paralympic content. Drawing on Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the motivations of social media users for consuming Paralympic content and the relationship between different types of motivations and social media engagement. Our data collection spanned six Paralympic Games, both Summer and Winter, from 2012 to 2022, resulting in the analysis of 1,297 tweets from unique X (formerly known as Twitter) users. Findings suggest that the prevalent motives for consuming Paralympics content on X include information, integration and interaction, political stance, empowerment, inspiration, and entertainment. Regarding engagement, inspirational content is most likely to be liked, while integration and interaction, and entertainment are more likely to be retweeted.