David Nevil Blog

My Proof of Concept project is coming along well, but a bit slower than I had hoped. I have coordinated my equipment and most everything else I will need, including purchasing cavalier mics, but I have yet to start filming. I will be doing my filming this upcoming weekend, at the latest.

I am in the process of finalizing my committee, but it currently appears that it will consist of Lauren Kogen, Laura Zaylea, and Matt Fine. I have met with Laura several times this semester, who has given me a lot of great insight, including helping me choose my topic and my other committee members. I have met with Matt twice, who gave me great feedback on the direction of my project; he gave me great ideas about looking at my issue on a longer-term span, as well as guiding me on who my interview subjects may be.

With my project, I want a video piece that speaks to my strengths as a media producer. I want my project to serve as a premiere part of my media portfolio when I seek employment in the media industry.

The authors of this study performed a content analysis on one year of TikTok and Instagram posts by 18 highly marketable NCAA athletes. They examined differences by platform, gender, and content type. They found that male athletes posted more “frontstage athletic performance” and “backstage marketable lifestyle” content, and that their female counterparts posted more “backstage attractive appearance” content which received the highest engagement found in the study. They also found that “frontstage” athletic content was more commonly posted to Instagram, while “backstage” content was more commonly posted to TikTok. This study is rooted in Goffman’s (1959) self-presentation theory, which explains how individuals present themselves and regulate the impressions others have of them.

This article gives a lot of insight about how athletes utilize social media, particularly how college athletes utilize social media in the era of NIL. The right of college athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness is still a relatively new phenomenon, and social media is a powerful tool for athletes to seize this opportunity. The gender differences seen in this study reinforce traditional gender norms, where male athletes posted more athletic performance content and female athletes posted more content promoting their physical appearance. It appears that audience wants male athletes to be athletes and female athletes to be models. This opens an interesting question: are the athletes posting the content promoting their preferred image or their followers’ preferred image? Are these athletes happy and content with their social media personas? I think a study of a similar nature would be particularly interesting to see five years from now, as anecdotally we have already seen the pendulum swing, with female athletes like Caitlin Clark (WNBA) rising to prominence posting primarily “frontstage” athletic performance content and male athletes like Jared McCain (NBA) posting primarily “backstage” content.

The feedback I received on my preproduction binder was incredibly valuable. Matt helped me to pay more consideration to the role of social media managers in professional sports, as well as the idea of analyzing athlete public personas in the pre-social media world. Calvin gave me great feedback from a technical standpoint for logistics of recording my interviews, including camera and microphone configuration, as well as offering his help with audio skills and intro/outro music.

For my proof of concept, I do not believe I am quite ready to conduct my first interview, so I will be conducting a “dry run” for my interviews. I will conduct two mock interviews with a friend or classmate, ensuring my technical capabilities to record quality video and audio. One interview will be on-camera using lavalier mics and the other will be a recorded Zoom interview.

Wanzer, C. V., Pfender, E. J., Travis, N. P., & Bleakley, A. (2024). Mapping the field: A content analysis of marketable NCAA athletes’ social media self-presentation. Communication & Sport, 0(0). https://doi-org.libproxy.temple.edu/10.1177/21674795241232404

The authors of this study analyzed data on the mental health of college students around the time of the expansion of Facebook across college campuses. They found that the rollout of Facebook on a college campus had a negative impact on student mental health, in addition to finding impairments to academic performance. The leading mechanism the authors found for the negative impact on mental health was unfavorable social comparisons.

Unlike the other sources I have red as part of my research, this article did not focus on social media as it pertains to athletes, but instead, to the broader impact of social media on college students as a whole. Social media can have negative impacts on all college students, including student athletes. For everyone, social media can be a means for social comparison, and that includes student athletes. These athletes may compare themselves to their more successful counterparts, leading them to develop feelings of inadequacy about their own lives and athletic careers. Additionally, this research likely can be applied to professional athletes as well, though further research would be needed to confirm.

I have contacted two potential committee members thus far, with one agreeing to serve on my committee and the other requesting a meeting, which I am in the process of scheduling. I still need to make a decision regarding the 3rd member of my committee and finalize that spot. Finally, I still need to reach out to the intended 4th member (adjunct) of my committee and finalize their spot in my committee, which I intend to do tonight.

Braghieri, L., Levy, R., & Makarin, A. (2022). Social media and mental health. American Economic Review, 112(11), 3660–3693. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20211218

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The research in this article focused on a case study of what the authors refer to as, “maladaptive parasocial interaction (PSI)” directed at Chicago Bears kicker Cody Parkey after he missed a potential game-winning field goal in the 2019 NFL Playoffs against the Philadelphia Eagles. The authors sampled 512 tweets posted in the week following the game, with qualitative analysis finding that the maladaptive PSI manifested in: criticism, threats, anger, and support. The researchers’ results showed that 351 tweets had a negative tone, while 161 were positive. The most prominent classification of tweets were criticism (43.2%); threats accounted for 20.3%; anger was 10.4%; 26.2% of tweets expressed support for Parkey.

This article highlights the negatives of social media for prominent athletes. In this case, on a prominent stage, the end of the Chicago Bears’ 2019 season could be blamed on one play. In response, frustrated fans scapegoated the team’s kicker, Cody Parkey, and relentlessly criticized and threatened Parkey via social media. Given the parasocial relationship that fans have with athletes, these fans likely thought that Parkey would never see THEIR post, but when thousands of fans all have the same mindset, it leads to a virtual mob that is near impossible for an athlete like Parkey to escape. Social media provides a lot of opportunities for athletes, but when those athletes are the subject of a prominent mistake or loss, the opportunistic nature of social media quickly turns to a forum for public shaming and abuse.

Sanderson, J., Zimmerman, M., Stokowski, S., & Fridley, A. (2020). “You Had One Job!” A Case Study of Maladaptive Parasocial Interaction and Athlete Maltreatment in Virtual Spaces. International Journal of Sport Communication, 13(2), 221–238. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2019-0129

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This article focuses on growth in athlete social media following around critical junctures or team transfers, such as the NFL Draft. The authors of this study developed a custom web scraper to gather data on football players’ Instagram and Twitter profiles before and after the 2017 NFL Draft. Their results found that athletes drafted in the earlier rounds of the Draft were likely to see larger growth in their social media following than those drafted in later rounds. They also found that the athletes with verified Instagram accounts were more likely to see follower growth, however, they did not find a significant relationship suggesting the same for Twitter.

This article shows which athletes are able to build the largest social media brands and when. Specifically, NFL players drafted in the early part of the draft generally have an easier time building a personal brand on social media and building a following, opening the door for sponsorship and other economic opportunities, leaving players drafted in the later rounds with less personal branding opportunities. This research can likely, but not necessarily, be applied to other sports, showing that an advantage to social media for athletes is personal branding, however not all opportunity is the same, as there is a disparity based on draft position.

Yiran Su, Y. S., Baker, B. J., Doyle, J. P., & Kunkel, T. (2020). The Rise of an Athlete Brand: Factors Influencing the Social Media Following of Athletes. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 29(1), 33-46. https://doi.org/10.32731/SMQ.291.302020.03

Many professional athletes, including a number of NBA basketball players, have used social media to share their personal experiences with mental illness. This article focused on DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love, who shared their mental health experiences in 2018. This study quantitatively studied 3,336 fan responses that DeRozan and Love received on social media and found that the responses were overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, challenging the stigmatization of mental illness, and fostering an environment of acceptance for both athletes.

Going into my research, I saw social media as almost exclusively a negative factor for the mental health of athletes, thinking about the athletes that receive hateful posts and messages after a missed shot, dropped pass, strikeout, etc. This article’s research has challenged that notion, shining a light on how social media can be positive for an athlete’s mental health. I think as a public, we have a tendency to sometimes treat professional athletes as if they aren’t human. Professional athletes embody levels of physical strength and ability that the average person can only dream of attaining. They live lavish lifestyles funded by their multi-million dollar salaries. So, we can say anything derogatory that we want to them on social media, because there’s no way it can bother them, right? Yet, the truth is many prominent athletes do struggle with their mental health and sharing their struggles on social media can better allow the general public to humanize them. As a sports fan, it’s easy to criticize an athlete on social media when you view them as a robot of superhuman athleticism, and it’s a lot more difficult to criticize them when you view them as a person with feelings, struggles, and weaknesses.

Scott Parrott, Andrew C. Billings, Samuel D. Hakim & Patrick Gentile (2020) From #endthestigma to #realman: Stigma-Challenging Social Media Responses to NBA Players’ Mental Health Disclosures, Communication Reports, 33:3, 148-160, DOI: 10.1080/08934215.2020.1811365

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08934215.2020.1811365

1. I have mixed feelings about the research progress I’ve made so far. I’m happy with the research I have done for the weekly blog posts, and have found some really insightful articles as a result. I have also done a fair amount of technical research on the skills and equipment I will need for the production of my project. That said, I am a bit discouraged by how I have managed my time thus far. I feel that I have allowed the work for my other courses take priority over my progress on my project at times. Though I have been finding articles for the blog post, I feel I could be finding more to support my research.
2. Like with research, my feelings about my project vision/pre-visualization process. The things I have done well have included picking my topic and form to give myself a clear direction. I have also put together a pretty clear idea of who I want to serve on my committee. That said, I have been similarly discouraged by my time management. While I have an established plan for the composition of my committee, I have not yet acted on it by reaching out to potential committee members.
3. I am still figuring out how my project development and academic research will address the expectation of the paper to explain the foundation of the project and analyze its success in terms of the theory used and its significance. This is something I will want to discuss with Professors Zaylea and/or Fernback and/or my committee.
4. For the second half of the semester, I am most excited to finalize and meet with my committee, as well as beginning the production side of my project.

Social media has changed the nature of athlete-fan relationships and the personal branding of professional and collegiate athletes. This study explored the perceptions of international student athletes of social media for personal branding and interactions with fans post-pandemic. With the growth of social media and the factor of the COVID pandemic, athletes interact with fans less face-to-face and more virtually via social media. The authors interviewed 10 Division-1 and Division-2 international student athletes and found the four following established themes:

1. social media consumption versus content creation
2. effects of name, image, and likeness regulations (significantly, international student athletes are excluded from the NIL right to monetize, but still allows the opportunity for these athletes to grow their personal brands)
3. personal brand building on social media
4. fan interaction on social media for ISAs

The authors reference Kelman(1958) and his social influence theory, which, “stated that individuals have various circles of influence in their lives, such as athletes or celebrities, who may impact their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, and which points to the strength of one’s social network as an indicator of one’s individual influence.”

Going into reading this article, I expected it to exclusively provide support for the positives of social media use by athletes, but it actually addresses some negatives as well. Namely, the article pointed out a new piece of information to me, that international student athletes do not have the same NIL rights as other student athletes. That said, social media still has a role for those athletes as far as generating attention for those athletes and facilitating growth of their personal brands and allowing them to connect with fans. I went into my research expecting the role of social media to be essentially the same for all collegiate athletes, however, while there are similarities, this article shows how the impact of social media can be unique for international student athletes.

This week, I had conversations with Laura Zaylea about the overall direction of my project and the makeup of my committee. Additionally, while I likely will still sign out equipment from the equipment office, I purchased a microphone that could be an option for me to use.

American Behavioral ScientistVolume 67, Issue 11, October 2023, Pages 1322-1339

© 2022 SAGE Publications

, Article Reuse Guidelines

https://doi-org.libproxy.temple.edu/10.1177/00027642221118289

The authors of this article, Lim, Donovan, Kaufman, and Ishida, conducted a series of “fixed-effects panel models” to examine the relationship between NFL athletes’ social media activities and their on-field performances. They found a negative relationship between social media posting frequency and performance, as well as finding that players who posted content with a higher level of humility were more likely to have better performances.

This article and this research perfectly illustrate a negative aspect of social media as it applies to professional athletes, and probably the rest of the population. This article doesn’t heavily explore the “why” of the results that they see, but it’s well-known that social media can be addicting and distracting, and one can reasonably assume that athletes that use social media more heavily are distracted from their primary role as an athlete, leading to suffering of performance. In addition, social media use and exposure to public criticism on social media can lead to mental health issues, and these can also have a negative impact on athletic performance.

International Journal of Sport Communication, 2021, 14, 33–59 https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2020-0055
© 2021 Human Kinetics, Inc.

The Journal of Sport Management’s article, “The Influence of Personal Branding and Institutional Factors on the Name, Image, and Likeness Value of Collegiate Athletes’ Social Media Posts” (2023), analyzes the effects of personal branding factors and institutional factors on the social media NIL value of men’s and women’s college basketball athletes in California. The authors tested three hypotheses regarding the relationship between personal branding and NIL value, as well as three hypotheses regarding institutional factors and NIL value. They found:

1. No significant association between, “the quality of a collegiate’s Instagram biographical information and their social media NIL value.”
2. There was a significant association between, “a collegiate athlete’s post count and their social media NIL value.”
3. There was a positive association between, “account verification status and social media NIL value.”
4. “A collegiate athlete’s level of competition was significantly positively associated with their social media NIL value.”
5. There was a, “significant positive relationship between an athlete’s NIL value and the social media following associated with their university’s brand.”
6. Sport gender had a significant association with social media NIL value when collegiate athletes at all levels of competition were included in the analysis, but no significant association was found when restricting the analysis to only Division I athletes.”

Assuming I choose to move forward with athletes and social media as my final topic choice, this article will be incredibly helpful to my research. Unlike the article I wrote about in Blog #3, this article provides quantitative data on the relationship between NCAA athletes and social media in the era of NIL. This article highlights NIL and personal branding, which are some of the positive factors of athletes using social media. Something I still need to address in my research is finding quantitative data on the negative effects of social media on athletes, particularly when it comes to criticism and mental health.

https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.2022-0155