Abstract
This paper argues that the affordances of Twitter help sportspeople to show various presentations of themselves to help build and sustain reputation. It introduces Twitter as a social media tool that has become popular with sportspeople to engage with their fans directly. It demonstrates why it is so popular and how sportspeople use the platform to help build their off-field reputation through various aspects of self-presentation through different types of tweets. It also acknowledges Twitter transgressions where sportspeople have posted reputationally damaging Tweets and finally focusing on how two sportspeople have used Twitter to help sustain and rebuild reputation during and after a scandal.
Keywords: sportspeople, Twitter, reputation, tweets, hashtag, @, #, self-presentation, impression management, scandal, rebuild, sustain
Reputation management is an important part of a sportsperson’s life, idolised by fans for their sporting talent and followed closely both on and off-field. This is more pronounced since social networking sites have given fans access to areas of sportspeople’s lives beyond the sports field (Preussler & Kerres, 2013). This paper argues that when managed well Twitter provides an opportunity for sportspeople to help build and sustain reputation and when necessary help to rebuild reputation during and after a scandal.
Sport is one of the most emotionally invested forms of entertainment that is available to all people. Sportspeople build up strong allegiances from fans through mainly their sports talent but also their off-field presence (Meng et al, 2015). Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have significantly impacted the way that sport is being consumed, media created and how teams and sport individuals are connecting with the sports community and fans (Gibbs, 2013).
Twitter is a free microblogging platform that allows users to open an account and start posting tweets straight away. This quick and simple method of sharing information allows you to follow other users and their tweets, and vice versa, without seeking permission. Unlike other social media sites this non-reciprocal form of following means that anyone can start following a sportsperson, providing a good opportunity for a sportsperson to start using Twitter as a tool to help build their reputation through self-presentation (Pegoraro, 2010; Weller et al, 2013).
Twitter is a hugely popular medium due to its capability of reaching large audiences instantaneously. There are currently 326 million monthly active users (MAUs) on Twitter and 500 million tweets sent each day (Sharma, 2018).Users of Twitter have improved it’s capability of reach and connecting different networks by the application of @ symbol helping to address and reply to usersand the use of #hashtags,linking common areas of interest and easier search functionality (Weller et al, 2013).
To consider Twitter as a good platform for self-presentation that can help to build and sustain reputation we must first look at how self-presentation is managed. Goffman’s theatrical metaphor for self-presentation as a performance proposes the front-stage as performances the audience can observe (Pearson, 2009). Twitter is front-stage with varied audiences and multiple viewpoints. Twitter’s fluidity and immediacy of interactivity allows self-presentation to be multi-faceted, tweeting from different persona’s; the athlete, humanitarian, brand ambassador, off-field ‘ordinary’ person, evolving and adapting to external social environments. It is important for a sportsperson to acknowledge this varied audience requiring them to subtly modify their self-presentations yet be cohesive and compliment their offline status (Papacharissi, 2011).
Sportspeople were some of the earliest adopters of Twitter to communicate unmediated directly with a wide audience of followers and fans. This self-promotional tool is a big drawcard for sportspeople, seeking to get noticed and gain followers (Preussler & Kerres, 2013). Being quick and mobile it is an easy platform to use, fitting into a busy lifestyle of training, events, travel and personal life. Messages are short, easy to create, produce and post (Gibbs, 2013). And the use of multimedia on Twitter further strengthens engagement, Goffman sees these tools as the ‘setting’ or props for the presentation of self which in turn can enhance reputation if used well (Papacharissi, 2011). Currently the top male sportsperson on Twitter is Cristiano Ronaldo with 77m followers and the top female, Serena Williams with 10.5m (Cooper, 2019).
Twitter allows content creation to be dynamic, multi-media, and interactive. Social capital is built by interacting with other users and entities within the network through @ to connect, commenting of followers, retweeting and #hashtags, this amplifies the sportsperson through the network increasing exposure, leading to an increase in followers and continuing to build and sustain reputation. Any exposure can attract negative commentary and trolling that could have a detrimental impact on reputation, although this then allows for recourse through another facet of self-presentation (Sanderson, 2013; Ellison & boyd, 2013).
The importance of building reputation through multi-faceted self-presentation and social capital through network reach, helps to create a sportsperson that fans identify with and encourages greater loyalty. These strong advocates are more resistant to negative media and provide positive affirmation and support through crises (Jalonen, 2017). Reputation is one way that we recognise the status of sportspeople, it needs to be continually nutured and sustained by interaction, and never taken for granted. Followers want sportspeople to be engaging, responsive and have something to offer of interest requiring them to strike the balance between protecting their privacy but also sharing enough to engage and draw in their fans (Preussler & Kerres, 2013; Korzynski & Paniagua, 2016).
Sportspeople who build their reputation and personal brand on Twitter may become more marketable and attractive to sponsoring companies looking for a share of the fan audience, increasing exposure of the sponsors brand and vice versa. Cristiano Ronaldo is a good examplepromoting his association with sponsor Nike “Excited to show you my new Nike Mercurial Superfly 360 LVL UP” boots (C. Ronaldo 30thMarch 2019).It’s important for sportspeople to continue to have a positive reputation to not jeopardise the sponsors brand. Any negative publicity can result in loss of money to both the sportsperson and associated sponsors (Gibbs, 2013; Jalonen, 2017).
The following paragraphs highlight examples of sportspeople’s self-presentation using Twitter aware of the various audiences that they need to present to; fans, media, the industry, activists or marketers. Presenting to fans their reputation as a hard worker with a strong commitment to fitness, training and learning (Sanderson, 2013). Liverpool FC player Trent Alexander-Arnold, engages with his followers on Twitter with the following “Warming up for the rest of the season @LFC” (T Arnold 13thFeb 2019)and connecting into a wider network of his football club using the @ symbol.
Fan expectations are constant they want to receive first hand news on their idols current status. On 6thFebruary 2019, Rafa Nadal, posted a sequence of tweets “Hi All: I write these words as the end of the season. It has been a complicated year, very good at the tennis level when I have been able to play and at the same time very bad as far as injuries are concerned.” He had over 1000 responses from fans concerned about the injuries, wishing him well and thanking him for not forgetting his fans. He followed up with a tweet thanking all his fans. This interaction on Twitter is a good example of how a sportsperson can sustain reputation by connecting closely with their fans through their sporting career.
Presenting oneself as a humanitarian helps to maintain reputation by tweeting about your affiliation to charitable associations.Usain Bolt uses @ and # to create a connection to the charities he is working with, “Iam back at @SoccerAidfor @Unicef.ukfor another year! Don’t miss out on the chance to see me play again. Buy your tickets at http://www.socceraid.org.uk/tickets and let’s defend play for every child #socceraid#UNICEF” (U. Bolt, 27thMarch 2019).
Sportspeople are role models, reputation on and off field is critical. Besides overt public performances, the more ‘back-stage’ performance that Goffman describes reflecting an individual’s private or family life has become a feature of social media for many sportspeople (Papacharissi, 2011). This helps them appear more ‘real’, sustaining and perhaps even boosting reputation. Serena Williams recently tweeted “It completely breaks my heart when I leave the house and Olympia @OlympiaOhaniangets upset and starts crying….” (S. Williams, April 23rd 2019). One of many openly heartfelt tweets, she has used Twitter to show a deeply personal and emotional side, her ‘mother’ persona. The response was an outpouring from other mothers expressing their understanding through many likes and retweets.This example of engagement shows that they are not just on-field idols but people just like us that we can connect with (Sanderson, 2013).
Twitter affords sportspeople a self-presentation of themselves as newsreporters, for example Shaquille O’Neal announcing his retirement from NBA using a multimedia option via Twitter “I’m retiring Video: http://bit.ly/kvLtE3 #ShaqRetires” (S. O’Neal, 2nd June 2011). Or providing an alternative opinion to unfavourable media articles, an example of this is golfer John Daly in 2010, taking to Twitter to respond to a journalist’s article he did not approve of, encouraging his fans to call the reporter and complain (Sanderson, 2013). Building reputation from a position of trust as a news disseminator, someone close to the source, provides an alternative lens for followers to review the story, bringing them closer to the sportsperson (Sanderson & Kassing, 2011).
For a sportsperson, it’s important to have built up positive content on social media to help redress future negative sentiment (Mason & Moody, 2014). However there are incidents where sportspeople have posted damaging tweets without considering the implications. Australian swimmer, Stephanie Rice tweeted a homophobic slur after Australia beat South Africa in a game of rugby, although she deleted the slur and went on to apologise via Twitter (Associated press, 2010) she lost her Jaguar Corporation sponsorship and her misdemeanor was broadcast globally across all media (Gibbs, 2013). This is just one example of many Twitter transgressions by sportspeople that have had a negative impact on their reputation, career and proved financially costly. Generally offensive posts are deleted and apologies are issued through Twitter and other forms of media. Twitter has made crisis and reputation management a lot harder to resolve, before social media the concern might be what would appear in the paper the next day, now it is what might be written in a matter of seconds, so response has to be swift and well managed (Bernstein, 2012).
There are many other instances where sportspeople use Twitter to help sustain and rebuild reputation during and after a scandal. A good example of a notable sports personality who used Twitter both, before, during and after a scandal is Lance Armstrong. Prior to the doping scandal, Armstong’s reputation was well renowned, he’d won seven Tour de France titles, recovered from cancer and started the Livestrong charity. His supporters were widespread from his cycling career and his life beyond cycling, this made his fall from grace even greater.
Armstrong used Twitter as his stage to express a variety of self-presentations aimed at saving face with fans and discrediting his accusers. His response early on in the scandal was denial using Twitter to keep his self-image intact by attacking USADA putting them in a bad light, “My official statement re: @usantidoping’s latest witch hunt. [link] unconstitutional” (Hambrick et al, 2015). He also used Twitter as a diversionary tactic focusing on what he was still doing in his sport, reminding fans of what he is actually famous for. Other posts were insights into his personal life using the ‘ordinary guy’ presentation, aiming to build trust by allowing fans access to those more intimate ‘back-stage’ areas.
After the investigation he used Twitter again to combat the negative media coverage, Twitter gave him direct access to a large audience on a personal level in order to retain influence over his followers, utilising the loyalty and equity he had built before the scandal (Hambrick et al, 2015). Once the findings came out and knowing he’d been exposed his self-presentation was again that of the athlete keeping fit, connecting with fans, and winning back support and trust using images of himself back on the bike.
Although criticism was laid that he did not use Twitter to seek forgiveness or acknowledge wrong-doing after the Oprah Winfrey interview, this didn’t seem to have any lasting detrimental effect on his reputation. Today Lance Armstrong is still popular on Twitter focusing on continued fitness, family life, charitable work and supporting the cycling community with frequent commentary. Armstrong had 3.7m followers when the scandal broke and 3.4m today. The fan support and advocacy that he built up prior to the scandal would have been helpful in maintaining some of his reputation even after they found him guilty of doping.
Australian cricketer, David Warner after the ball tampering scandal in late March 2018, used Twitter to show remorse and desire to take responsibility. He posted three tweets following a tearful press conference to explain his position within the process. Then followed up with a tweet on the 5thApril “I have today let Cricket Australia know that I fully accept the sanctions imposed on me. I am truly sorry for my actions and will now do everything I can to be a better person, teammate and role model.” By using Twitter to present his remorse and acceptance of the sanctions he is able to start rebuilding and repairing the damage to his reputation, this tweet had over 22,000 likes showing fan support for his contrition and further promotion via other forms of news media.
The blurring between personal and public life on Twitter is evident. Interestingly, fans following their hero’s on Twitter feel more connected to them by virtue of a more complete impression of the sportspersons identity and life. However, they are also able to separate the two, many fans acknowledge that what these sportspeople do in their private life is their own business, as long as they are continuing to compete at the highest level, it doesn’t matter about off-field indiscretions, fans will defend them on social media regardless (Johnson, 2011).
From these two examples it is clear that sportspeople are using Twitter in different ways to repair their image and rebuild reputation. Ideally, the best way to use Twitter for rebuilding reputation is a swift acknowledgment, offering an apology, taking full responsibility and showing remorse, helping rebuild credibility. Presenting a consistent set of messages to their audiences, featuring personal life, charitable and other non-damaging activities helps to prevent alienation of fans. However as Twitter functions to allow varying self-presentations, shifting messages can also work for different audiences (Hambrick et al, 201; Mason & Moody, 2014).
In conclusion, this paper focused on how sportspeople use Twitter as a reputation management tool. Twitter’s appeal due to ease of use, immediacy and fluidity enable sportspeople to manage an impression of themselves via tweets that reflects various self-presentations. These conscious self-presentations help build reputation and social capital by providing the audience with various personas, for example the athlete, humanitarian, mother/father or brand ambassador. Twitter’s technological affordance provides a platform to build a large network, through non-reciprocal and non-permission following and connecting via @, retweeting and hashtags, all mechanisms that extend network and reach, encourage interaction, help build support, and further enhance reputation. However, an inappropriate tweet can also risk reputation, so content although appearing to be quick updates, needs to be carefully crafted. And because of the affordances of ease of use, immediacy and network reach the platform can then be used as an ideal tool to help rebuild reputation both during and after a transgression or scandal.
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Great paper Stephanie. While I am pretty useless at actually using Twitter myself, I find it fascinating and have been reading quite a bit about it lately. I find it particularly interesting in crisis management. You’ve talked a lot about personal reputation crisis management here and it’s interesting to see the things you’ve talked about (‘ease of use, immediacy and fluidity’) are also reflected in other types of crisis’s that Twitter can be used to manage. A couple of examples I can think of, are political crisis’s (such a political reputation management but also crisis’s such as the Arab Spring), and natural disasters.
During the Arab Spring and other recent political uprisings, Twitter was used to communicate with protesters in real time about police activity and crack downs (Ahmed & Jaidka, 2013). Previous studies of social and political movements highlight diffusion theory which states that “in order for ideas to diffuse rapidly, there should be direct contact between adopters or actors” (Ahmed & Jaidka, 2013). Twitter enables the dissemination of information and ideas at a rapid pace through vast networks of people and removes the need for adopters and actors to have any physical contact, speeding up the pace at which social movements progress offline (Ahmed & Jaidka, 2013). This speed, and the removal on intermediaries, is similar to the way that you have shown sports people manage their reputation crisis’s using Twitter. However, I suspect that it can also be used to very quickly spread negative information through a sports person’s fans.
The way that sports people use Twitter to deliver specific messaging to their followers is also reflected in the way that governments deliver messages to their constituents during environmental crisis’s. During the Queensland floods, the hashtag ‘#qldfloods’ was tweeted over 35,000 times with up to 60% of these being ‘retweets’. This shows that information dissemination was a key role of Twitter during the Queensland floods, similar to sports people usage to disseminate information quickly. Research also found that Twitter users in the Queenland area also stopped sending other types of tweets, focusing only on broadcasting information about the floods, thereby enhancing the crisis messaging (Bruns et al., 2012). I would be very interested to know if this trend was reflected during a sports persons reputation crisis. Do their fans stop tweeting about anything else during the crisis, enhancing either the positive or negative information being disseminated?
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Ahmed, S., & Jaidka, K. (2013). Protests against #delhigangrape on Twitter: Analyzing India’s Arab Spring. JeDEM – EJournal of EDemocracy and Open Government, 5(1), 28–58.
Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., & Shaw, F. (2012). Crisis #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods on Twitter. Media Ecologies Project, Queensland: ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation (CCI. Retrieved from http://www.mappingonlinepublics.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/qldfloods-and-@QPSMedia.pdf
Hi Emily
thank you for reading my paper and I like your analogies, the Queensland floods were an interesting topic that we covered in one of my other units in relation to Twitter.
I am also relatively new to Twitter however find the subject of sports people and social networks and how they use social media really interesting.
In thinking about your question my initial thoughts were that fans or detractors would be very active during a crisis, people certainly have something to say whether positive or negative. So I went back to analyse the David Warner crisis. Prior to the tweet that I quoted in the paper David had posted his first apology and admission via a screenshot of a message he’d written on his phone’s Notes app. This tweet was pounced on by incensed cricket fans and general population, all of whom seemed to reject the apology and criticise his lack of contrition earlier in the scandal waiting until after the news conference that Bancroft and Smith had both attended. Interestingly though and this might be seen as a cultural difference, his supporters and those who were expressing their sympathy and support appear to be from a fan base in India where he plays IPL and is extremely popular as a player.
He then went on to post the three tweets that I mention a few days later accepting his punishment and the response from a more mixed audience is far more muted and supportive. The anger was starting to subside amongst the Australian public.
In many ways when looking at it, and speaking from an English fan’s perspective, I feel that the Australian public may have taken it as a slur on themselves hence the outrage expressed in the first instance.
I then went to look not just at his feed but also #davidwarner and #balltampering and this produced much more editorial or comedic commentary, rather more jokes being made at his expense or news reports etc. which came from across the world and were differing in balance of opinion.
When I read through some of the many comments, you have to wonder how they can ignore the vitriol that is directed to them after such a scandal. Is the price of trying to start rebuilding reputation worth that kind of feedback or is it something that they consider part and parcel of putting themselves out there online.
The Israel Folau situation that has recently hit the headlines is another example of a sports person whose transgression was through the platform (and Instagram), since then his own account has very little added to it, except for response to the first Tweet, however when you #izzyfolau there are a wide range of responses and views both supportive and non-supportive.
It seems that in these instances, unlike the nature of using Twitter for crisis management of a natural disaster that then has users respecting that tweet space, a sports person scandal opens up and even bigger network of tweets, retweets and hashtags for both fans and anyone else with an opinion to get involved in the conversation and voice their thoughts.
Hi Stephanie,
You make a good point about the cultural difference between twitter users. I think it might be more than just the fact that Warner has more fans in India.
Garcia-Gavilanes, Quercia, and Jaimes (2013) analysed more that 2.3 million twitter user profiles to try to find out if the culture of a country impacted how people use twitter. They found that in highly collective countries, such as India, users tended to support leaders and ‘superiors’ opinions. They also found that these cultures valued group harmony and that elaborate apologies are typical (Garcia-Gavilanes et al 2013). Conversely, in more individualistic societies, such as Australia, twitter users were expected to only look after themselves and their immediate family and were not as used to humility and elaborate apologies (Garcia-Gavilanes et al 2013).
They also go on to explore the difference in cultures which have a high power distance “the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally” and how a higher power difference leads users to be more likely to follow and retweet celebrities .
I suspect that both a difference in power distance and collectivism / individualism between India and Australia also contributed to such different reactions to David Warner and the ball tampering incident.
All that being said, I asked the mad cricket fan on my couch how he felt about the whole incident and he said ‘It brought the game into disrepute and Australian’s don’t do that, we play hard but we play fair’. So from my sample size of one, I suspect that you are on to something when you say that the Australian public took it as a slur on themselves and their cultural identity as Australians.
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Garcia-Gavilanes, Ruth, Daniele Quercia, and Alejandro Jaimes. 2013. “Cultural Dimensions in Twitter: Time, Individualism and Power.” Human Computation Blog. http://www.ruthygarcia.com/papers/icwsm2013.pdf.
Hi Emily
Thank you for your response, and highlighting this paper, it was a really interesting read and I certainly hadn’t really considered the cultural nuances from how Twitter users from different countries used and interacted on Twitter. I think you are quite right in your observations, the type of tweets from the Indian fans of Warner were very much about collectivism and support.
It led me to think more about how culture plays a significant role in online communities and through social networks and something that could be of interest to examine further. Too often I think we see social media through our Western lenses and quite generically when clearly there is great variety and difference of how people will interact and use their social media channels based on the ‘pace of life’ or whether they are a an individualist or collectivist society.
Thank you again for your interest, and I like your couch research! I suspect that had you asked the question of most other Australian cricket fans that would have conjured. Being an England fan we have our own theories. hehehe
I really enjoyed reading this Stephanie. I drew a lot of parallels between your paper and my own, which was on AFL players and their inappropriate behaviour being spread on social media. It is intriguing to see how sports players represent themselves on social media and how much power it can hold. You stated that social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can be used to engage with fans and build a reputation and I completely agree. I like that you looked at the flip side of this and the potentially damaging effects of inappropriate use of social media can bring. Reputations can be torn to shreds almost instantaneously online and it was great to see you delve into this and how sports stars can rebuild their reputation. The example that you used of David Warner with the ball tampering scandal is a fantastic choice as it is well known, recent, and very relevant. It really drives home the point that you are trying to make and adds a great context to your writing.
In my paper I focussed more on behaviour, however I was considering focussing on reputation, so I am glad that you tackled this issue to great effect. We both agree that sport is an entertainment business and sports stars are idolised by fans. They are seen as role models and can have a profound influence on our society. They are heavily scrutinised on and off the filed and social media can be an outlet to show people a representation of themselves.
Hi Marcus
Thank you for reading and enjoying the paper, I really enjoyed researching this and there were so many other areas or angles I could have gone down. I was looking at focusing on just the negative as this has had the more sensational headlines, so I am glad that your paper featured more about behaviour and how social media has almost caught many sports people unawares and in the end they have made some serious errors of judgement.
There are a couple of great papers that I referenced on Twitter and sports stars, Sanderson has definitely focused on the subject. There is also an interesting paper that ties in with your paper on the effects of positive and negative tweets on fans.
THE IMPACTS OF TWITTER TRANSGRESSIONS ON AN ATHLETE’S BRAND https://www.atu.edu/jbao/spring2016/JBAOMason.pdf
One thing you touched on at the end there regarding self presentation was something that I used as a main focus for the paper, and how reputation is not only important and worth maintaining and preserving but how like all of us we use multiple presentations of ourselves to do that. This is also something that can be extended to Instagram as well. I found this really interesting in trying to break down some of the various ways they presented themselves and that it varies from one sports person to another although there are similarities.
Hi Stephanie
I enjoyed reading your paper, Stephanie. Great work.
Twitter is a really good platform for sportspeople and other public figures to stay in touch with followers, sponsors and other interested parties. I like the fact that the focus is more on what people have to say, rather than having the distraction of image overload that occurs with Instagram. Photos are nice, and people can still post them on Twitter, but there can be too much of a good thing at times.
Reputation takes time to earn and it can be destroyed in an instant through an inconsiderate tweet or bad offline behaviour that makes it to social media. It can be hard for a public figure to build their reputation and their following up again, even when they apologise. We tend to see public figures, in this case sportspeople, as examples for young people to look up to. We can also forget that they are human and will make mistakes from time-to-time, as we all do. I wonder if this fall from the pedestal that they are placed upon is why they seem to fall so hard and so quickly.
Thanks for reading my paper and your appreciation, it has been hard to get some readers on the second page of the Web 2.0 papers!
I think you are very right, I feel sometimes that we are voyeurs on their lives, we want hero’s and icons, it’s a natural part of humanity to idolise and look up to people however we do not always acknowledge that, as you say they are as liable to make mistakes as we are. There is a real element of tall poppy syndrome and we love a scandal and gossip. It is almost like we are looking for them to fail, in some of my research there was the focus on how people often took pictures or caught them doing something they shouldn’t be doing and then posting to social media or sending to the papers. This has been happening well before we had camera phones but it is now more easy to expose an indiscretion.
@Marcus Smith also wrote a paper on AFL players behaviour and their indiscretions on social media which has caused a lot of angst. We discussed how now many sports stars are taking themselves off social due to the trolling, and this is when they haven’t even done anything wrong. Mental health concerns have become really bad, both here and in the US in particular in the NBA where they are treated almost like demi-gods. And here a recent Melbourne AFL game was used to highlight the impact that trolling on social media has on players.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/demons-to-run-though-mean-tweet-banner-20190403-p51adw.html
Reputation is something that is really important to all of us, as you say it can as easily be broken as built and on the internet it is something that will always be with us. The records stay on there forever should someone want to check so we have to be mindful of our digital footprint that we leave. As Solove describes our reputations are created based on the judgements that people make of us based on the plethora of information available about us and how we behave (2007, p.30). Our reputation is key to our identity and how we behave and interact with other people. We depend on others to interact and engage with us and without this respect and interaction we’ll struggle to achieve anything or make any progress in society. Solove makes the interesting point that our freedom in part depends on how others in society judge and trust us. Trust and reputation go hand in hand too (p.31)
One of the most interesting elements of his book is the paradox of reputation. We talk about it as something being earned and a product of our own behaviour and character and yet it is also something given by others to us, so it is not solely our creation and in some ways puts us at the mercy of others (p.33-34).
This is interesting in the context of Twitter (and other social media channels) and how people use it to help build and sustain reputation. However they portray themselves, whatever the self presentations are, they are still at the whim of what followers and fans will make of their posts and interactions. There is only so much they can control.
In particular is the devastation that can be caused to someone who has unjustly had their reputation sullied, this can cause serious repercussions and in many cases even if someone has been vindicated the stain can never be truly washed away.
lots of food for thought there but such a great topic, only wish we had longer.
Solove, D. (2007). How the Free Flow of Information Liberates and Constrains Us, in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet. Yale University Press.
Hi Stephanie
What a great read!
I sincerely apologise; I was unable to locate your paper and was so oblivious to the fact that there were older posts in this stream, which certainly accounts for the extremely limited engagement with these conference papers!
As a follower of my tennis heroes: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic on Twitter, I agree that sportspeople use the social media platform as a means to sustain and “help build their off-field reputation through various aspects of self-presentation through different types of tweets”.
Of the three tennis legends, Rafa has the highest followers, 15.6M, Federer 12.4M followers, and Djokovic with 8.55M followers.
They are, as you say, giving us access to aspects of their lives “beyond the sports field”. I love how they post snippets of their day, whether, with a photo or a short video, on their training, simply spending time with family, cooking a meal, attending and supporting charitable organisers – or even opening their own, updating fans about their injuries etc., they are connecting with their fans, building and sustaining their reputation. This statement certainly encompasses many of their self-presentation, “Twitter’s fluidity and immediacy of interactivity allow self-presentation to be multi-faceted, tweeting from different persona’s; the athlete, humanitarian, brand ambassador, off-field ‘ordinary’ person, evolving and adapting to external social environments”.
Web 2.0 technologies have certainly blurred the distinction between private and public spheres. As a follower of my sporting hero, I most definitely want them to be “engaging, responsive and have something to offer of interest” and keep my interest.
I like the two examples that you have used to demonstrate how sportspeople have enhanced their reputation and promoted their sponsors brand, and have also jeopardised their sponsorships by ‘impulsive’ tweets that tarnished their reputation.
As this Guardian article claims of Lance Armstrong, “Forgiveness may still be a long way off but the disgraced cyclist’s Tour de France podcast is proving popular and he is well qualified to have an opinion” (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jul/22/lance-armstrong-podcast-tour-de-france-cycling).
I love your responses to the feedback that you have received, particularly, Solove’s “paradox of reputation”.
Thank you again, for an engaging read, Stephanie!
Thank you for finding my paper in the end Kogie, you are right I don’t think people realised there were more papers! I should have actually included links to it when writing comments on other papers, but I didn’t want to appear too pushy of my own paper. Oh well, an interesting limitation of this platform in some ways.
I’m glad you enjoyed the paper, I enjoyed researching it and find the subject matter of self presentation and reputation fascinating. I work in a large corporate and we use social media channels in many ways but ultimately is all about building and sustaining reputation.
And this was a reason to have a look at how sports personalities used it, there is still great diversity among them in many ways, some are a lot more open and casual about their off field lives than others. Some are very much the ambassador and you can get a sense their material is far more crafted and staged.
I like Serena’s twitter feed, although not a great fan of her’s I found her feed to be really genuine and actually gave me an insight into her as a mother which I found very endearing and started to change my impression and thinking of her so given that, her usage and exposure on Twitter could be having a great deal of success in gaining new and other followers or fans without really even considering it.
Thanks for sending that link, it’s really interesting to see how disgraced stars are making their way back into people’s homes, devices, psyche even. In the end we may just forgive and forget.