Abstract
On October 18, 2019, The New York Times reported that Major League Baseball was eliminating more than 40 teams from its minor league system. Fourteen months later, some teams permanently ceased operations when contraction became official. During those 14 months, fans and community members joined advocacy campaigns to save their teams. Given how minor league fans have unique, community-based identities, social media may help them communicate support for their teams during a threat. Using a framework of social media advocacy, the study sought to (1) understand the advocacy efforts present on social media and (2) the tone and emotions manifest in tweets related to contraction. Using quantitative methods, the study found that most discussions of contraction were negative in tone and contained emotions like anger. The most often used advocacy strategy was information, which may have been a lost opportunity for fans to rally support. As time moved on, tweets contained less negativity, more sadness than anger, and more use of the community advocacy strategy, providing evidence that fans found contraction inevitable. The study makes a contribution by bringing advocacy communication into the discussion of sport fandom and uses social media data to extract fan emotions during identity threats.
In baseball, often romantically referred to as America’s Pastime, history and tradition are revered (National Baseball Hall of Fame, n.d.). Change of any kind in the sport—whether it be to rules of the game, uniforms, or how the sport is run—is typically met with reservation. As sportswriter Joe Posnanski (2017) put it: “Baseball fans, we don’t like big changes. OK, let’s just say it: We don’t like any changes” (para. 4). Prior to the 2021 season, however, baseball experienced a dramatic change from over a century of precedent. The subject of those changes: the relationship between Major League Baseball (MLB) and Minor League Baseball (MiLB).
In 1903, the two major baseball leagues, the National League (NL) and American League (AL), and the National Association (NA) of minor leagues signed the National Agreement, ending a multi-year conflict (Society for American Baseball Research, n.d.). Under this agreement, the NL and AL cooperated to form MLB, and a formal classification system for minor leagues was introduced, known as MiLB. Since then, MLB and MiLB have maintained a relationship through Professional Baseball Agreements (PBA) renegotiated every 7 years. Besides a fraught renegotiation in 1990, renewals of the PBA have typically been uncontentious affairs (Cooper, 2019). However, leading up to the expiration of the PBA in 2020, MLB and MiLB were farther apart on negotiations than at any point since 1990 (Cooper, 2019).
On October 18, 2019, Baseball America reported that MLB—arguing the need for facility upgrades across the minor leagues, improved working conditions for players, and better geographical ties between major league teams and their minor league affiliates—proposed taking total control over how MiLB is organized (Cooper, 2019). Under this reorganization, MLB would end affiliations with 25% of minor league teams whose facilities they determined would be too cost-prohibitive to improve. That same day, The New York Times published a list of 42 teams that were facing elimination (Waldstein, 2019).
Following these reports, more than 100 members of the United States Congress sent a letter to Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred stating their opposition to MLB’s proposal (Passan, 2019). In their letter, they refuted MLB’s financial reasoning, arguing that the proposal was “not in the best interest of the overall game of baseball, especially when Major League Baseball’s revenues are at all-time highs” (Passan, 2019, para. 6). Furthermore, they argued that eliminating minor league teams would “devastate our communities, their bond purchasers and other stakeholders affected by the potential loss of these clubs” (para. 2).
MLB issued a statement in response, emphasizing their aims to improve player travel and working conditions, and criticizing MiLB for making the negotiations public to Baseball America (Calcaterra, 2019). During the next 14 months that MLB and MiLB were negotiating, minor league teams on the initial New York Times list fought for survival, and some launched advocacy campaigns like the State College (PA) Spikes’ “Save Our Spikes” campaign (State College Spikes, 2020). For Save Our Spikes and other team campaigns, social media became an important way to spread the word about the team’s potential fate and to publicize the efforts of local politicians rallying behind the teams. This study takes inspiration from these community advocacy campaigns and investigates the conversation on social media about MLB’s rumored plans to cut ties with more than 40 minor league communities across the U.S. Unfortunately, for 431 teams including the Spikes, MLB ended their major league team affiliations on December 19, 2020 (Lacques, 2020), leading some to permanently cease operations (Kaplan, 2021). Though the decision was touted as streamlining operations and cutting costs, the success of contraction is unclear. Attendance at major league games is 6% below 2019 levels (the last season before the pandemic), making it the largest single-season drop since 2009, and some of the contracted teams, such as Houston’s Round Rock Express, were reporting impressive pre-pandemic attendance (Brown, 2022; Niesen, 2021). Pushback against the decision is being expressed from players, politicians, and fans, but a consensus on preserving the “civic institution” of minor league baseball is equally opaque (Niesen, 2021, para 7).
Given the unprecedented nature of this decision and the potential impact on perceptions of America’s pastime, our study examines the online conversation around MLB’s plans to overhaul the minor league system. Specifically, we wish to examine how fan identity in a minor league setting manifests in online conversations. While we know that minor league fan support is based more on local bonds and geography than is major league fandom (Ressler, 2013; Wear & Heere, 2020), little research in sports communication examines how people discuss affinity with minor league teams, especially when the existence of that local team is threatened. While we know that social media is an important place for sport fans to launch community advocacy efforts around team relocation (e.g., Andon, 2021), we know very little about community advocacy efforts to save minor league teams—which we saw unfold during the MLB-MiLB negotiations. Through quantitative content analysis of the Twitter conversation for 30 days at two key timepoints in the MiLB contraction decision (the initial media report on October 18, 2019, and the final invitations to the 120 remaining minor league clubs on December 19, 2020), we trace the volume of discussion, tone, and emotions that were used to describe the decision. First, we aim to understand how participants felt about MLB’s decision from a stakeholder relationship standpoint, and second, we hope our findings will shed light on how social media may have played a role in advocating for those teams. We use the term “participants” deliberately: people who engaged in the Twitter conversation are self-selecting to comment on the contraction decision but may or may not be fans and instead can have many different relationships to the situation (see longer explanation in the Literature Review). Theoretically, we further explore literature from nonprofit online advocacy (e.g., Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Svensson et al., 2015) with the goal of better understanding how the community of sport can support local teams or speak out about decisions by billion-dollar sport leagues. In reflection of good two-way communication, organizations and individuals engage in conversation with one another on social media as equal participants (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). Given that MLB went forward with contraction, our study examines online advocacy that ultimately failed but is no less important or interesting. Scholars have established that organizational climates that support the sharing of dissent improves dialogue between organizations and their supporting entities (Kassing, 2011). However, in the case of contraction, the MLB arguably did not communicate strategically before or after the decision, resulting in discord on social media that deserves consideration (Niesen, 2021). As major sports organizations continue to wield power in society, our study hopes to uncover how online conversations may be a resource for the “community of sport” (Kassing & Sanderson, 2015) to discuss decisions and the fate of their local franchises.
Literature Review
Social Media Use in Minor League Sport Fan Communities
Social media has become an important way for fans and those connected to sport to engage with sport figures (Kassing & Sanderson, 2015). When used appropriately, social media can be an important way for fans and communities to build stronger bridges and parasocial relationships with sport figures or other fans throughout the sport community (Kassing & Sanderson, 2015; Fenton et al., 2021). For others, online outlets may be ways to enact fandom for a niche sport, helping to provide a connection for fans that are not tied to a team geographically (Hakim, 2021).
Minor League Fan Identity
For minor league baseball teams, however, it’s important to remember that being a fan is not the only way people are connected to their local teams: Community members, gameday volunteers, local youth organizations, local businesses, local governments, and local residents all participate in the community of sport around that team (Meder & Leckrone, 2002; Ressler, 2013; Wear & Heere, 2020). Minor league baseball represents an important economic engine for local communities not seen at the major league level (Agha, 2013; Agha & Rascher, 2016), and fan identity with the team rests more on local identity connected to the community rather than performance on the field (Lachowetz et al., 2009; Ressler, 2013). Research has shown that major league team affiliation has little or no effect on fandom at the minor league level (Agha & Coates, 2015; Hanna, 2016). Instead, local community involvement is a stronger predictor of fan interest in minor league baseball (Hanna, 2016; Lachowetz et al., 2009). Thus, fandom at the minor league level is no more or less strong; it’s simply different. This paper uses the Kassing et al. (2004) definition of community of sport to emphasize the uniqueness of fandom in minor league baseball; specifically, that anyone connected to sport is part of the community surrounding the sport organization—fandom (or a deep psychological connection to the team; Wann, 2006) not required. Specifically, “experiences in the community of sport are bound by [such things as] demographics” (p. 358), including geography in small-town America, where many of the contracted minor league teams are located. Thus, while sports communication literature discusses how fans react to a favorite major league team relocating (Wegner et al., 2020) or ceasing to exist (Mitrano, 1999), this study broadens the perspective to include other groups of connected individuals that may not be fans but are dependent on the success of the minor league team in their communities. Hence, terminology throughout the paper refers to these individuals as “participants” in the conversation rather than fans.
The announcement that 43 teams would be slated for contraction—meaning they would lose major league affiliation or cease to exist altogether—can be considered a type of identity threat (Mansfield et al., 2020). While identity threats can include simply losing a game, identity threats can result from team relocation or dissolution. Anything that provides an unflattering psychological connection can result in an identity threat and result in fans seeking to distance themselves from the team. Research investigating major league team franchises relocating or ceasing to exist has demonstrated the strong sense of psychological loss suffered by the fan community (Mitrano, 1999). More recent research has demonstrated how fan communities rally behind their teams online to express negative views of the pending move, and in some cases, have prevented team relocation (Andon, 2021). In some cases, fans disassociated themselves from the location of the team and instead found new ways to identify with the franchise when it left a geographic region fans called home (Wegner et al., 2020). For minor league franchises, whose connection with fans is based on community loyalty and involvement (Lachowetz et al., 2009; Wear & Heere, 2020), this may present a different type of identity threat not investigated so far in sports communication.
Identity Threats and Online Communities
While extant research has examined how minor league fans use social media to discuss their teams, much sports communication research has demonstrated how online communities are formed for fans. In the case of the MLS team Columbus Crew, outrage at the rumor that their team would be relocated sparked a successful grassroots effort to keep the team in Columbus (Andon, 2021). Fans also use online spaces to cope with crises that befall their favorite sports teams (Brown & Billings, 2013; Guo et al., 2020), protecting their identities as fans by engaging in crisis repair strategies (Brown & Billings, 2013) or commiserating with other fans (Lim & Brown-Devlin, 2021). Online conversations about minor league sport teams have yet to be investigated in communication research; most of the work on minor league baseball teams utilize fan surveys (e.g., Koo et al., 2009; Hanna, 2016). This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of minor league baseball fandom and how members of the MiLB community of sport reacted to the identity threat of MLB’s 2020 contraction decision.
Research on major league team identity threats has demonstrated how team relocation or dissolution is a highly emotional, personal experience for fans (Mitrano, 1999). It results in deep sadness, like the loss of a family member (Mitrano, 1999), as well as anger and outrage (Andon, 2021; O’Rourke, 2003). In a study conducted by Hyatt (2007), fans expressed in interviews that they had lost interest in the hockey and professional sport itself following the move of their long-standing local team, the Hartford Whalers. In 2016, news outlets reported intensifying anger and sadness emanating from St Louis fans across the country when NFL owners decided to move the St Louis Rams to Los Angeles (Chappell, 2016). In the years that followed, these emotions eventually morphed into more “emptiness than anger” (McCullough, 2019; para. 5) Thus, we propose that participants discussing the MiLB contraction issue on social media will reflect some of these same qualities in their posts on social media. Given the potential identity threat in the loss of a local MiLB team, we predict:
Social media posts related to contraction will be significantly more negative in tone than those irrelevant to contraction. Social media may also be an important place for understanding the emotions of fans. Psychology has identified six discrete emotions (anger, sadness, disgust, happiness, fear, and surprise; Ekman, 1992), and more recent work utilizing social media data has determined that these emotions can be identified and coded from social media posts (Ghazi et al., 2010). Thus, given the deep emotional losses experienced with the relocation or dissolution of a local team (Mitrano, 1999; Wegner et al., 2020), we predict that social media posts related to contraction will likely reveal these negative emotions found in other studies that look at fans offline. Thus, we predict:
Tweets related to contraction will demonstrate significantly more negative emotions of disgust, sadness, and anger than those irrelevant to contraction. Lastly, the first mention of changes to the minor league system was announced a full year ahead of the final invitations sent from MLB. Given this gap between rumor and the final decision, we wish to see how the conversational tone and emotions may have changed from the first initial shock to the final end. Mansfield et al. (2020) discussed the temporal importance of fan identity threat, such that longer duration threats may provide time for fans to adapt to the changes. Thus, given the unique nature of fandom in MiLB, we are curious to see how the initial outrage compared to the final tone and emotional response to the announcement. Perhaps participants have time to cope emotionally with the loss of their team. Thus, we ask:
How will the tone and emotions contained in the social media posts relevant to contraction change from 2019 to 2020?
Social Media and Online Advocacy
The 21st century has produced a large body of research exploring how movements to enact change exist in online formats. As a result, various typologies have emerged aiming to capture the development of such movements, either online or offline, and the various outcomes at both the individualistic and collectivist levels. Various typologies concerning usage categories, such as awareness/advocacy, organization/mobilization, and action/reaction, also emerged to explore both the temporal process of engagement as well as the original usage (Earl et al., 2010; Vegh, 2003). Scholars often highlighted the value of digital communication for advocacy and activism groups to promote causes widely when many of these groups had limited resources (Yang & Saffer, 2019).
Within public relations scholarship, scholars often use the terms advocacy and activism interchangeably (Choi & McKeever, 2022; Ciszek, 2018; Jackson et al., 2018; Seo et al., 2009). However, according to De Moya and Bravo (2016), there is a distinction between the two concepts that centers on the claim that “advocacy refers to seeking support on an issue, while activism refers to direct action taken to enact social or political change” (p. 236). Fuller and McCauley (2016) make a similar claim stating that advocacy utilizes engagement mechanisms within established structures, such as policy-making while activism is centered on change through direct actions, such as protests. Yang and Saffer (2019) situated advocacy as the broader term, claiming that scholars are beginning to recognize the “power of activism networks in advocacy” (p. 6), and posit that social network perspectives can reveal how advocacy or activism networks interact to promote social change. Advocacy can be defined as “the act of publicly representing an individual, organization, or idea with the object of persuading targeted audiences to look favorably on – or accept the point of view of – the individual, the organization, or the idea’” (Edgett, 2002, p. 1). Numerous studies have utilized the concept of advocacy when applying theories of engagement, social networking, and exploring efforts to mobilize audiences through media (e.g., Choi & McKeever, 2022; Yang & Saffer, 2019; Bortree & Seltzer, 2009).
To clarify, this paper situates participants’ responses to MLB’s plans to contract MiLB teams as a form of advocacy instead of activism in sport. Activism is conceptualized as “a process by which groups exert pressure” to change practices they deem to be “problematic” (Smith, 2005; as cited in Xiong et al., 2019). Such efforts are often classified as aggressive (Xiong et al., 2019). Because of ongoing negotiations and MLB’s public threat to completely dissolve the minors, MiLB teams were told to be civil toward MLB during negotiations (Wagner, 2020). Additionally, athlete activism in sport is considered “engagement in intentional actions that disrupt oppressive hegemonic systems by challenging a clearly defined opposition while simultaneously empowering individuals and groups disadvantaged by inequitable arrangements” (Cooper et al., 2019, p. 154–155). Much communication scholarship positions activist groups as antagonists to organizations (Toledano, 2016), yet it is known that sport fans have unique, deep emotional relationships with their teams based on social identity (e.g., Wann, 2006). Using the outlined parameters of the concepts within public relations and sports communication literature, this paper considers participant communication related to contraction to be part of advocacy efforts wherein the local community was invited in and prompted to take ownership over the mission. These efforts were often persuasive rather than antagonistic (given the need for MiLB to ensure its future existence) and, as seen in the resulting decision by MLB, did little to upend power relations between MLB and MiLB.
In their article exploring nonprofits’ effective use of Twitter, Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) propose a typology that categorizes efforts by nonprofits to make advocates of their audience through dialogic communication and community-building functions; specifically categories of informational, community, and action tweets. These all call upon the nonprofits’ online audience to become advocates for the cause by equipping them with information, engaging them in a dialogue, and providing clear actions for them to take. These actions can occur simultaneously or build toward inspiring offline action (Guo & Saxton, 2014). Work that has used this typology has found that the vast majority of advocacy messages tend to be information, which is then shared through users’ networks (Saxton & Waters, 2014). A study of sport-focused nonprofits’ advocacy efforts found similar results (Svensson et al., 2015). This advocacy typology is particularly applicable to the study of contraction in MiLB because it accounts for the ways that participants had to cope with the long-duration identity threat from the loss of their local teams and the power imbalance of MLB. This situation led participants to try and save the MiLB by promoting their cause simultaneously by spreading awareness and community building. Therefore, we apply this typography within our study to categorize the efforts by participants to galvanize support for MiLB from their audiences online by asking the following research questions.
How do the social media posts relevant to contraction employ online advocacy strategies of information, community and action?
How do the advocacy strategies present in social media posts relevant to contraction change from 2019 to 2020?
Method
The analysis performed in this paper was modeled after Billings et al., 2015, which employed quantitative content analysis to analyze Twitter messages relating to former NBA player Jason Collins’ coming out story. Quantitative content analysis is suitable for coding online social media messages because the methodology focuses on the content as the unit of analysis (Riffe et al., 2014), and our study aims to examine the online messages being shared by participants around the MiLB contraction decision. Sarcasm is a hallmark of social media data, so a human coder is most appropriate for distinguishing sarcasm when coding tone and emotion (Hernandez Farias & Rosso, 2017), as in our study. Human coders are also more reliable and consistent when the coded variables are latent in nature (Billings et al., 2015; Riffe et al., 2014). Additionally, we seek to build upon the work by Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) and incorporate their typology of nonprofit advocacy on social media into a study of sport advocacy, and thus using human coders as Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) do seems most appropriate to test their framework. The study closely follows the procedure for quantitative content analysis as outlined by Riffe et al. (2014).
Data was collected using Social Studio software using two queries. All English-language tweets mentioning both “major league baseball” and “minor league baseball” and variations thereof were collected starting October 18, 2019, when the initial news story broke about contraction and for 30 days following. The next batch were collected starting on December 19, 2020, when MLB announced its official invitations to the remaining 120 minor league teams and for 30 days afterward. The data were collected in retrospect, meaning the first batch was pulled in December 2020 and the second was pulled in January 2021, so that the entire social media conversation could be captured for each 30-day period.
Three researchers developed the codebook and performed three rounds of training to define the concepts before the final coding was commenced. The items used for training were randomly selected from the sample using a random number generator and were removed from the sample before final coding, following procedures outlined in Riffe et al. (2014). The final samples numbered N = 3561 for the first query and N = 3127 for the second. Once coders were in agreement with the practice samples, one researcher coded the rest of the sample, coding every fifth tweet without replacement. The lead researcher coded a randomly selected 10% of the sample for intercoder reliability (n = 134); all codes met acceptable reliability using Krippendorff’s alpha, ranging from .75 to 1 (Riffe et al., 2014) using the ReCal online calculator (Freelon, 2010). Two emotions, surprise and fear, occurred rarely in the dataset, so they were purposefully included in the intercoder sample to ensure reliability could be assessed (Riffe et al., 2014). Tweets were excluded if they were “not available” or did not include any distinguishable language (e.g., included only hyperlinks or emojis) because the purpose of the study was to understand the conversation present on Twitter. If a tweet included language and emojis or language and a hyperlink, the tweet was coded. The final study samples were n = 680 for the first timeframe and n = 610 for the second.
Measures
Descriptive codes included topic of the tweet, relevancy to contraction (relevant 47.5%, not relevant 49.5%, unknown 2.9%), speaker (individual 78.4%, organization 18.2%, can’t tell 3.3%), type of tweet (original 46.7%, retweet 38.8%, quote tweet 14.6%), and date of publication. Topics were developed during the practice coding and included contraction-related policy (including reasons why contraction is or is not necessary; 47.5%), non-contraction-related baseball policy (e.g., opening stadiums for voting; 5.3%), player related (e.g., player setting a record or signing with a team; 14.8%), team related (e.g., game results; 10.1%), promotional (e.g., giveaways or advertising; 5.6%), fandom (e.g., opinions on how much someone likes a team or player; 4.7%), other (e.g., honor for first Black broadcaster; 8.2%), and unclear (e.g., “that sucks”; 3.8%). Speaker was determined by looking at the handle pulled by Social Studio. The vast majority of tweets were posted by individuals. Type of tweet and date of the tweet were pulled from Social Studio.
Definitions and Counts of Latent Variable Codes.
Results
Results for Chi Square Difference Tests for H1 and H2.
*Differences significant at p < .001.
Results for Chi Square Difference Tests for RQ1.
**p < .001, *p < .01.
RQ2 asked how tweets relevant to contraction employed online advocacy strategies. For this test, a chi square comparison test was used comparing observations to equal cell counts. The analysis showed a significant difference in observations (χ2(3) = 509.45, p < .001), with information being the most common strategy (n = 370, 60.4%), followed by community (n = 175, 28.5%) and action (n = 67, 10.9%).
Results for Chi Square Difference Tests for Advocacy Strategy Over Time (RQ3).
Discussion
This study sought to establish the role of community of sport in minor league baseball to sport communication literature. Fan and stakeholder relationships with minor league teams are currently under-investigated, and this paper seeks to help identify and explain how people relate to minor league sports teams and how they handle the potential loss of those franchises. Our findings reveal that people who care about minor league teams are also affected emotionally by the potential loss of a local team, and they view the decision to close the franchise negatively. Additionally, we further incorporate the typology of online advocacy strategies of information, community, and action into sport communication, building upon work in nonprofit (e.g., Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012) and sport for development studies (e.g., Svensson et al., 2015). Our study shows that advocacy strategies can be used to analyze online advocacy efforts that are not officially organized by NGOs but ones enacted by the wider community of sport, including personnel, local community members, and government or media thought-leaders. These findings present important implications for theory and the practice of sport communication by investigating these oft-overlooked audiences and communication strategies.
Theoretical Implications
The first purpose of the study was to build upon the typology of fan identification by looking at relationships with minor league teams. Research in sport communication has documented that people have unique relationships with minor league teams, especially in baseball, which relies upon a connection to a local geographic community rather than the major league franchise (Agha & Coates, 2015; Hanna, 2016; Koo et al., 2009; Lachowetz et al., 2009; Ressler, 2013). The relationship is concerned less with fandom and more with a representation of the community and what makes it unique and special (Koo et al., 2009; Lachowetz et al., 2009; Wear & Heere, 2020). Our study found that participants demonstrated reactions to the loss of a local minor league team similar to those documented at the major league level—emotional distress, negativity, and anger (Andon, 2021; Mitrano, 1999; O’Rourke, 2003). Interestingly, findings also indicated that the negativity seemed to wane once the 2020 decision was finalized, and only the emotion of sadness was associated with relevant tweets, not anger or disgust. For example, one participant tweeted after the invitations were announced, “Sad day for @MiLB ...Some good memories at these places.” Certainly, there could be more relevant tweets celebrating a team being invited to remain part of a major league system in 2020 than in 2019. However, this may also provide evidence for Mansfield and colleagues’ (2020) temporal factor in the typology of fan identification threats. By 2020, participants were prepared for the potential loss of their team, especially after the 2020 MiLB season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps the decision felt inevitable by December 2020, and participants had already found ways to cope with the identity change (Mansfield et al., 2020), and thus they expressed sadness rather than anger or disgust, which were present in 2019. For example, a participant was simultaneously sad and critical of the final decision in 2020: “Another crazy day in this industry. So happy for all the @MiLB workers who can now feel a little safe about their jobs and so sad for those who lost their affiliation. Regardless, it’s a shame it had to go down like this.” Future research should continue to investigate fan identity threats longitudinally to further explore the impact of time and psychological distance on how the community of sport at all levels copes with identity threats and loss.
Following research on online nonprofit advocacy, our study also found that information was the most employed advocacy strategy by participants around the contraction decision. Nonprofits both within (e.g., Svensson et al., 2015) and outside (e.g., Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Saxton & Waters, 2014) sport seem to use information most frequently when advocating for a cause or their work. Our study found that participants similarly turned to information as a common way to discuss the contraction effort in 2019 and 2020. As argued in previous work (e.g., Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Saxton & Waters, 2014; Svensson et al., 2015), simply providing information misses an opportunity to use social media to engage in conversation about the decision and what it means for those impacted. For example, tweeting about rumors (“Whoa. Latest proposal from MLB side, to replace current MLB/MiLB PBA and minor league structure [up after 2020], apparently includes bringing the @StPaulSaints into MLB affiliation and out of the Independent League”) rather than action (“Since @MLB wants to take away baseball from over 40 towns across the nation, Maybe they could lose an anti-trust exemption?”) is less useful for advocacy and motivating change (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Saxton & Waters, 2014). In 2020, we saw a slight uptick in the use of community, perhaps as participants discussed the outcome of the decisions with each other. There was a lack of action as an advocacy strategy which signals that perhaps more active engagement to support the teams might yield more favorable results. Unfortunately, this seems to be too little, too late, as the efforts did not dissuade MLB from contracting those 43 teams. The potential for online community advocacy in sport, while successful in some examples (e.g., Andon, 2021), may be yet untapped as part of an overall advocacy movement.
However, this is not to downplay the significance of social media as a means for the community of sport to discuss and rally behind a team or athlete. Fans have used social media to mitigate identity threats associated with team crises (Brown & Billings, 2013) or to create supportive communities where fans can build relationships (Fenton et al., 2021; Kassing & Sanderson, 2015) and find support for their fan identities (Hakim, 2021). While this paper did not track specifically who posted each tweet (beyond if they were an individual or organization), our study did find a significant number of tweets were relevant to the contraction issue (47.5% of all coded tweets). Some of the tweets referred to offline activations like press conferences or petitions for local government officials to sanction MLB. Thus, social media was not the only means of communicating displeasure or advocating against contraction. Instead, our study demonstrates how participants turned to social media as simply one tool to discuss a controversial issue that was relevant to their experience, whether they be fans of a team, the sport, or simply observers.
Additionally, this paper makes a contribution to social media fan community literature by identifying and incorporating discrete emotions into the analysis of social media data. While previous studies have coded for tone (e.g., Billings et al., 2015) or crisis strategy (Brown & Billings, 2013), the current study adds specific emotions of fans and community members to its analysis of the social media conversation. Thus, it builds upon work in psychology and information technology (e.g., Aman & Szpakowicz, 2007) and brings this new approach to online sport communication. These studies have shown potential for analyzing discrete emotions in big data studies of social media, which could be an interesting future direction for sports communication research. Understanding the emotions of fans when they post about their favorite teams online can help to provide more quantitative support for our current understanding of emotions in fan identity research (e.g, Hakim, 2021; Mansfield et al., 2020; Mitrano, 1999).
Practical Implications
The current study provides an example of how social media communication strategies could be further incorporated into sport organizational communication. This study examined how fans and other stakeholders used Twitter to discuss their opinions and emotions toward MLB’s decision to contract 43 minor league teams. They engaged in advocacy communication by sharing information, engaging in conversation, and urging action to save their teams. However, news outlets noted a lack of public communication from MLB and MiLB about the negotiations while this social media conversation was occurring (e.g., Wagner, 2020). Given the negativity and anger discovered in the social media conversation in this study, MLB and other sports organizations may want to consider how social media listening could aid in their communication to fans and stakeholders. Listening could be an important strategy to ensure fan and community concerns are addressed or relationships are repaired, particularly when the conversation is about something contentious. While certainly the power and financial weight of leagues like the MLB mean they can afford to lose a few fans without consequence, future crises (e.g., scandals, lawsuits) may need a more proactive response. And contraction is hardly the only issue MLB has been criticized for in recent years. In August 2022, minor league players were accepted into the Major League Baseball Players Association for the first time, and during the 2022 season, team owners agreed to pay for minor league players’ housing and, after settling a lawsuit, granted them overtime pay and minimum wage (Passan, 2022a). The 2023 major league season will incorporate major rule changes, including a pitch clock, to address criticism about the pace of the game—but not without pushback from current players (Passan, 2022b). MLB’s handling of these contentious decisions could benefit from open, genuine listening practices (e.g., Place, 2022).
Sport organizations can start listening to conversations on social media every day to demonstrate care and concern for their supporters. Our data was full of comments from participants who specifically expressed displeasure with the future of the sport and quality of the game. Two prime examples include “Not only do I not get an MLB team within a 3 hour drive of where I live but I don’t get a minor league team within an hour and a half @MLB @MiLB Great way to keep fans involved in the game” and “MLB: laying waste to MiLB while fixing the baseball to fuck with everything anyone thought they knew about the 2019 season while pretending it doesn’t know that a great many of its players are on drugs. It’s all good.” Listening in sport could include responding genuinely to widespread criticism (like these examples), understanding why fandom wanes (e.g., Hyatt & Foster, 2015), and allowing diverse community members to drive organizational policies and plans (e.g., Place, 2022).
On the other hand, social media may be a powerful tool for sports teams and fans (e.g., Kassing & Sanderson, 2015)—but this study showed that it may have been left untapped during the contraction debate. Social media technologies serve as a powerful tool for facilitating dissent (Kassing, 2011; Christensen, 2011). Christensen (2011) advocates for considering the contextual relationship between the affordances of social media and the materialities of the offline world. In other words, while dissent on social media can transcend physical boundaries and challenge power dynamics, it must also be considered critically within the context of the circumstances. In the case of the contraction, the fluctuation between the utility of social media for expressing dissent combined with the subsequent loss of momentum of the campaigns suggests that there may have been a misalignment between the online efforts and context. Given that the vast majority of advocacy posts were information-based, MiLB teams and participants may have missed an opportunity to put more momentum behind their online and in-person advocacy campaigns (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Svensson et al., 2015). For example, minor league teams could tweet out links to petitions or template letters for Congressional representatives. Participants could ask other participants to share the news or ask them how they felt about the decision by directly tagging them in posts, which could create an online conversation reaching the eyes and ears of MLB officials. Social media is powerful because of its social nature—simply tweeting information to one’s followers creates an echo chamber rather than real engagement and movement on an issue (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012).
Limitations and Future Research
The current study has certain limitations. First, as a content analysis, the study cannot determine cause or effect, and instead, its purpose is to describe communication artifacts (Riffe et al., 2014). The findings here are meant to illustrate the conversation going on about MiLB’s contraction during 2019 and 2020. Future studies could look at specific emotions or tone in reaction to official MLB statements using surveys or experimental methods.
Additionally, the study did not attempt to identify the Twitter users beyond if they were an individual or organization, and thus, we cannot assume all of the comments in the study were posted by fans or people in the immediate communities of the MiLB teams, unless the user self-identified in a coded tweet (see Table 1 for an example). Instead, our study looks at the conversation around the contraction decision, regardless of a user’s fandom or community status. Therefore, future studies could build upon these findings by examining identity threats over time and the discrete emotions experienced by self-identified or verified fans of a sports team. Future research could also test the codebook developed in this study for detecting advocacy strategies from social movements in sport. The codebook was inspired by codes developed for nonprofit organizations, but sport fans have recently used social media to engage in advocacy (e.g., Andon, 2021), and thus we extrapolated those codes to the sport advocacy context. Better understanding the ways individuals advocate for causes on social media can help build sport social media communication theory.
This paper aimed to uncover fan reactions to a contentious, unprecedented business decision in professional baseball history. Our content analysis of 60 days of Twitter reaction to the report and ultimate decision revealed that participants used social media to voice displeasure and negative emotions around the potential and eventual loss of a local minor league team. We also found evidence of advocacy behavior by individuals upset with the decision—and a few that were in favor of it. Unfortunately, MLB did not listen to these reactions. We hope these findings provide food for thought both for future sports communication theory-building on community building in minor league sports as well as the ways social media are utilized by fans experiencing identity threats. We also want to bring attention to the efforts of Save Our Spikes and the need for more understanding of sports advocacy communication.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Brandon Boatwright, Ph.D., director of the Social Media Listening Center in the Department of Communication at Clemson University, for his assistance with this project.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
