In today’s society, most of people doesn’t realize the power and the influence of sports media. So I want to focus on the topic of how influential sports media truly is by exploring the influence professional athletes bring through social media. As we known, media is a powerful source to bring impacts to our society in different ways, with the social medias we have today, it is became more and more easier for individuals to influence the public through social media, one of these individuals are the professional athletes.
From the journal “Sports Celebrity Influence on the Behavioral Intentions of Generation Y” by Craig Martin, Alan and Victoria Bush mentions about that: “Trend conscious teens are very active in utilizing the media and advertising in seeking out the latest products, services, and fashions” (Zollo, 1995). This shows that teenagers go on media and search for the what’s trending at the time, and then athletes became a source that every teenagers go to. In this case, the images and messages that athletes post through social media could be very powerful, it could simply effects on what teenagers want to do, wear, and buy.
Then in the journal “Understanding Professional Athletes’ Use of Twitter: A Content Analysis of Athlete Tweets” by Hambrick, Simmons, Greenhalgh, and Greenwell, it focus more on what kind of messages that athletes are spreading through social media such as Twitter. In the journal, it talks about “the study used content analysis to place 1,962 tweets by professional athletes into one of six categories: interactivity, diversion, information sharing, content, promotional, and fanship.” Other than that, the research also shows that interactivity takes 34% of the tweets while 28% the tweets are in the diversion category. All of these evidence shows the variety of the content that the athletes are expressing through Twitter, and it also shows that social media became a very important part of everyone’s life. Therefore, it’s quite clear that how influential sports related social media could be.
The reason why is sports media such as athletes on social media so powerful is quite simple. In today’s society, people see professional athletes as role models. Especially in Dorsa Moslehi’s article “Professional Athletes Affect Youth”, it talks about how influential these professional athletes are. She first pointed out the fact that: “Whether it be Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps, or Sharapova, these athletes are role models for our nation’s youth” (1). and then she talks about how: “Kids love to copy what they see or hear on T.V., the news, or from their friends; they may copy something as frivolous as the gum that a baseball player chews, the shampoo a swimmer uses, or the laundry detergent that their favorite football player advertises” (1). and in fact, all of these are true. Even some people may not noticing but the impacts that these athletes are bringing through media are huge.
Lastly, we are going in explore the influence sports media actually bring to our society. We all know that there both positive and negative messages on sports media, some of it could be truly helpful while some of it could be harmful to the teenagers. In Kay Ireland’s “The Pros & Cons of the Influence of Sports Athletes on Kids”, I think she did a wonderful job on talking about the pros and cons of the influence of sports athletes. She first points out the good elements such as sportsmanship, and fitness, which are both positive for kids to follow and could be really beneficial for them too. Such like when we talking about fitness, we could tell that: “Athletes do teach children about the hard work that it takes to become the best at a given sport” (1). But on the other hand, there are also negative elements that the athletes are teaching the young generation, such as: drug use, and lifestyle. Let’s take lifestyle as an example, some of the athletes: “concentrate on making money, living the high life and getting endorsement deals” (1). which are some not so great examples set for the kids. Following all of the evidence, we can clearly sees the power of sports media, and the reason why it’s so powerful in the first place, other than that we could really see the pros and cons which could stand for the representation of sports media.
Even many of us didn’t realize the fact until now, but when we look closely, it’s really easy to spot that the fact of sports media’s influence. We see countless of teengers follow whatever the athletes are doing on social media: the Ice Bucket Challenges, the Mannequin Challenges, or dress the way that the athletes are, wearing fashion brands such as: Off-White, Supreme, and Yeezys, etc. The influence of athletes through media is something undeniable, and now, we could see that the sports media somehow represents our trends, and our general pop-culture.
Sources:
Bush, Alan J., Martin, Craig A., and Bush, Victoria D. “Sports Celebrity Influence on the Behavioral Intentions of Generation Y.” Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 44, no. 1, 2004, pp. 108–118.
Hambrick, Marion E., Simmons, Jason M., Greenhalgh, Greg P., and Greenwell, T. Chrisopher. “Understanding Professional Athletes’ Use of Twitter: A Content Analysis of Athlete Tweets.” International Journal of Sport Communication, vol. 3, no. 4, 2010, pp. 454–471.
Ireland, Kay. “The Pros & Cons of the Influence of Sports Athletes on Kids.” LIVESTRONG.COM, Leaf Group, 13 June 2017.
Moslehi, Dorsa. “Professional Athletes Affect Youth.” Oracle Online, 20 Mar. 2016.
All images are from the internet.
BISMCS 333 SUMMER 2017 