Twitter

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this Forum for readers of Communication & Sport, as it offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the use value of Twitter for sports media researchers. My experience as a reviewer for a number of media, communications, and sports journals, as well as discussions with colleagues and peers, suggests that a noticeable increase in the number of articles examining Twitter and professional sports is inducing a range of reactions from readers. Two responses stand out. First, there is an acknowledgment that many researchers have identified the pivotal role of social networking platforms in the contemporary professional sports industries, reflecting the significant economic and ritual power exercised through media sport on a global scale (Rowe, 2011). This awareness promises to move sports closer to the center of important research agendas in communications and media studies, although this will require the consistent contextualization of sports within the overall development of digital media practices and cultures. Second, this widespread recognition is creating unwanted and possibly unavoidable side effects, including a distinct repetitiveness in some of the manuscripts produced of late. A thematic analysis of a limited sample of tweets focused on a sports event/league or athlete/celebrity is becoming a tired formula, especially when there is little connection to a broader research framework or agenda. It is likely that the popularity of sports on Twitter and the ease of access to data via the collection of real-time tweets are determining factors in this situation.

The novelty of Twitter is no longer sufficient justification for the study of this microblogging platform (if it ever was). This heavily hyped and promoted social media service began life in 2006, making it now middle aged in the accelerated life span of social media platforms. This fact informs the structure of this brief article. First, I discuss Twitter’s status as a commercial media enterprise, which offers a crucial context to understand its evolving uses, features, and applications. Second, I look both within and beyond sports media scholarship to identify examples that offer possible guidance and ideas for how the original study of Twitter, and social media more generally, might be approached in the future.

It appears that selected analyses of Twitter ignore the fact that this microblogging service is a “commercial message system” that fits within a much longer history of media message systems (Ruddock, 2013, p. 105; my emphasis). This character can sometimes be forgotten when misleading claims are aired in The New Yorker that Twitter is akin to a “public utility, like water or electricity” (Max, 2013). Such a notion is consistent with the idea that the uses of technology are socially determined but conveniently forgets the profit motive of those running the “utility.” Twitter is in the business of making money from the labor, activities, and affect of users and does so quite successfully, given that the company’s initial public share offering raised around US$1.8 billion in November 2013. Far from being a public utility, the architecture and operation of Twitter represents a commercial communication complex that encompasses a range of evolving activities and features, including (1) the insertion of sponsored messages into the feeds of users who include private individuals, business people, celebrities, journalists, news organizations, corporations, government departments, nongovernmental organizations, and other nonprofit organizations; (2) the ability of Twitter feeds to serve as tools for publicizing, marketing, promotion, brand building, and image management (it is worth noting that the sports management and marketing literature focuses on the effective operation of these tools); (3) the encouragement and commodification of new spectator and audience behaviors such as multiscreen viewing habits, “social television,” and in-stadium fan chat via mobile devices; (4) the promotion of new technologies for photographic and video content distribution, as highlighted by Twitter’s acquisition of the mobile video service Vine; (5) the advent of new types of commercial partnerships to deliver curated content to users and audiences, as shown by Twitter’s deals with the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) for the 2012 London Olympics; and (6) a data aggregation and analytics capacity that uses the volume, frequency, and geolocation of tweets to focus advertising and foster commercial partnerships. This capacity is used by third parties to develop business ventures (http://trendsmap.com/) and is also subject to attempts by the state to collect meta-data and monitor user activity (e.g. the U.S. National Security Agency).

A failure to at least consider these ceaseless commodifying efforts when organizing data scraped from Twitter can lead to analytical distortions. For instance, there is the risk of treating this service as a digital tabula rasa that is somehow representative of disinterested dialogue between large numbers of fans and citizens, underplaying the motivations and interests of those tweeting as well as serious questions over how many people post to Twitter on a regular basis when compared to the overall number of registered users. Given this context, pressing questions about Twitter include why this message production and distribution system is well suited to the “prevailing economic priorities” of the global media industries at this moment (Ruddock, 2013, pp. 105–106) and why the activities of athletes, sports teams, leagues, and supporters appear to fit so neatly within the commercial logic and ambition of Twitter (as well as Facebook, Google+, Snapchat, Mixi, Cyworld, Sina Weibo, etc.)?

An insistence on treating Twitter as a commercial message system speaks to the question of why any social researcher would systematically investigate its operation or use its content. Just as with the study of any media text, practice, or technology, Twitter is best positioned as the subject but not the center of inquiry (see Lewis, 2009). Twitter matters only because it is a source of insight into the transformation of media and technology markets, cultural and social power, politics, the uses of communications and information technologies, audience and user behavior, networked discursive formations, news and journalism, temporal and spatial relations, and so on. In the case of sports and social media, Jimmy Sanderson’s research is an example that deserves attention. His many case studies across a number of sports and social media platforms analyze how emergent fan behaviors and identities intersect through social media activities, contributing to the formation of an articulated research agenda (Sanderson, 2013). We learn not just about social media but also the increasingly porous boundaries that structure digitally mediated social connections, the negotiation of individual and collective identities, and the affective bonds and conflicts that exist between professional athletes and fans.

Much can also be discovered by looking beyond sports for how Twitter is being investigated. Mapping Online Publics (http://mappingonlinepublics.net/) is an example of what can be achieved through international and interdisciplinary collaboration. Sophisticated software is used to collect and process data from Twitter focused on news, natural disasters, elections, online publics, and national “Twitterspheres.” Advanced visualization tools complement the analysis. The inclusion of sports events and leagues within the projects encompassed by Mapping Online Publics adds to its usefulness, and the Twitter & Society edited collection (Weller, Bruns, Burgess, Mahrt, & Puschmann, 2013) is likely to become a key resource for many digital media researchers. In addition to computer-aided research methods, it is the scale of the stored data sets analyzed that stands out, mapping users and tweets measured in the hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. For those wanting to understand the contours and content of Twitter, this approach delivers a degree of lasting relevance to arguments by combatting the speed and ephemerality of much social networking content and activity.

Compelling research on Twitter and social media is appearing in many domains within the humanities and social sciences, acting as a catalyst for new ideas and approaches. Examples include Manuel Castells’ latest book, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (2012). He locates social media networks, microblogging, and mobile communications within the matrices of globally significant political upheaval and protest, including the “Arab Spring” and Occupy Movement. For sports researchers, it is the changing temporal and spatial relations manifest through Twitter and mobile media that should be noted, forming a “hybrid of cyberspace and urban space” (p. 222) that deserves thought, given the role of sport in contemporary cities and urban spaces. Anthropological approaches to the study of media also merit serious consideration as shown by the construction and experience of Trinidadian “Fasbook” detailed in Daniel Miller’s Tales from Facebook (2011). Miller reveals the heterogeneity of relationships, experiences, and meanings that intersect through this social networking service. Ethnographic investigation organized around the use and consumption of Twitter presents multiple possibilities for inquiry in localized media settings, especially given an existing tradition of sports ethnographies.

Digital media networks and online environments are central to the construction of lived social and cultural worlds, creating new categories of action and shared understanding (Couldry, 2012). Sports offer a prime example of pervasive mediatization processes in late capitalist societies, altering the dynamics of athlete and fan practices, contributing to new gendered, political, and technological inequalities, and complicating the borders of local, national, regional, and global experience. Twitter and other social media platforms offer effective sites to investigate these types of large-scale change, particularly when they are linked to the intensifying commodification of media practices and user activities. Small, one-off thematically organized case studies can make for interesting reading in understanding these activities. But insight into media sport is maximized when a case study of Twitter articulates its purpose in the context of an overarching project or research trajectory that exhibits any combination of critical intent, theoretical ambition, methodological innovation, and cross-disciplinary endeavor. Nothing less is required if Communication & Sport is to capitalize on its strong beginnings and become a must-read publication for those working within and beyond the boundaries of digital sports media.