A Qualitative Study Analyzing High Profile Student Athletes and Student Athletes on a High Profile Team’s Twitter Use

Abstract

Given how “context, audience, and identity intersect is one of the central challenges people face in learning how to navigate social media” (boyd, 2014, p. 30), the purpose of this study was to understand how six freshmen student athletes on a high profile team (men’s basketball) from a major Midwestern university used Twitter to interact with their team members, university students, and fans of their respective sport. As these six student athletes on a high profile team made the transition from high school and underwent their freshmen year they took on new roles and identifies, such as a representative of a university, beyond that of their non-athlete peers. At the beginning of the study, only one participant entered the university as a high profile student athlete, two others became high profile during the course of their freshman year, and the remaining three remained student athletes on a high profile team. Because of the high number of student athletes who used Twitter during this time of transition, it is important for universities to pay heed, due to the amount of attention these student athletes garner. The study followed the six student athletes’ use of Twitter, which was the student’s social media of choice, from the time they became a university student (i.e. their arrival on campus) through the fall of their freshmen semester and until the end of the spring semester. The subjects were interviewed about their Twitter use to try to understand their expressed reasons for how they used Twitter, whom they interacted with, how they viewed themselves on Twitter, and how they perceived their audience. The final component of the study was an analysis of their tweets to try to identify themes. The study attempted to understand the Twitter experience for high profile student athletes, using qualitative methods. This study looked at what their use of Twitter suggested about how they negotiated their various roles with their followers on Twitter.