“Posting More than Just a Black Square”: National Collegiate Athletic Association Student-Athletes’ Perceptions of the Athletic Department’s Role in Social Media, Racial Justice, and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

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.

“We Need to Wake Our World up”: Collegiate Athletes’ Communicative Constitution of Activism

“…While participants emphasized the value of offline activism as a marker of authenticity, the online channel often facilitated their offline engagement. This finding merges literature centering sport activism (e.g., Bunch & Cianfrone, 2022;Kluch & Wilson, 2020) and social media social movements (e.g., Kavada, 2015;Wolfsfeld et al, 2013) by recognizing the instrumental role of social media in constituting collective action. For example, while participants recognized offline activism as material and authentic, they also disclosed that they could discursively organize through strategic information sharing online (e.g., highlighting marginalized perspectives, promoting town halls, etc.).…”

“…While scholarship centering collegiate athlete activism is well-documented (see Agyemang et al, 2010; Black et al, 2022; Bunch & Cianfrone, 2022; Edwards, 2016b; Kluch, 2023; Mac Intosh et al, 2020), questions remain about how collegiate athletes organize and enact their efforts. Thus, this study builds on existing scholarship by examining athlete activism as an organizing process.…”

Promoting Coaches on Instagram: A Content Analysis of Posts Featuring NCAA Division I Coaches of Women’s Sports

“…To date, existing literature has largely focused on the use of social media platforms as brand management tools and as marketing platforms for athletic departments and professional team sports organizations alike (e.g., Anagnostopoulos et al, 2018;Bunch & Cianfrone, 2022;Johnson & Romney, 2018;Johnson et al, 2021;Romney & Johnson, 2020;Smith & Sanderson, 2015). The bulk of this work has examined how social media can help build and sustain relationships with sports fans and enthusiasts.…”

“…Other studies have focused on how social media provide opportunities for athletes to promote their personal brands and attract followers (Doyle et al, 2022;Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016). Previous work has also investigated the motivations driving sports fans' engagement with social media (Abeza et al, 2021;Lewis et al, 2020;Li et al, 2019;Spinda & Puckette, 2018), with a specific focus on the advocacy efforts in relation to social injustices (Bunch & Cianfrone, 2022;Harrison et al, 2023;Intosh et al, 2020).…”

Social Media and Sport Studies (2014–2023): A Critical Review

“…By implication, the scholarship is transitioning from a basic understanding and categorization of social media's usage, features, and adoption to a deeper examination of impacts in the sport industry, as well as its broader implications for society. This transition is evident in the exploration of various studies conducted in the past 5 years within the field, such as mental health (Chen & Kwak, 2023), religion (Ahmad & Thorpe, 2020), gender (Kavasoğlu & Koca, 2022), race (Kilvington & Price, 2019), activism (Bunch & Cianfrone, 2022), national identity (Humayun, 2023), free speech , protests (Yan et al, 2021), and online harassment (Demir & Ayhan, 2022).…”