By Chris Lotsbom and Matt Tracy, with Ellen J. Staurowsky
In an age of unprecedented media opportunities, how college athletic departments use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to their advantage, while protecting their brands and the reputations of individual athletes is uncharted territory. This was the subject of a panel last month at the College Sport Research Institute (CSRI) Conference at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, featuring Marcus Ginyard, a Tar Heel men’s basketball player, Kathleeen Hessert, founder and president of the Sports Media Challenge, and Steve Kirschner, associate athletic director for athletic communications at UNC.
As stakeholders in college sport experiment with this new media frontier, some administrators, coaches, and athletes have embraced Facebook and Twitter, proceeding boldly and adventurously while others have been far more cautious. Initial attempts to ban athlete use of these mediums have largely failed due to concerns regarding academic freedom, and First Amendment rights (O’Toole, 2006; Read, 2006). Some, like St. John’s University, recognized the power of the medium when it issued press credentials to Peter Robert Casey, an independent tweeter who had more than 58,000 followers who shared his passion for Red Storm men’s basketball (Staff, 2009). Others have proceeded more cautiously, concerned about the vulnerabilities associated with the freewheeling form of communication that is a hallmark of the Facebook/Twitter generation.
Media expert Kathleen Hessert, who works with college athletic departments and professional teams on how to best use social media outlets has a Twitter account and feels that the site is a tremendous opportunity for athletes and athletic departments. About the potential benefits of an effective strategy for the use of new media, Hessert said, “This is the age of now. When done well, it is a matter of providing [insight] to other people.”
The issue of how much control an institution can exert over the messages posted by athletes is very much up for debate. The University of North Carolina is using the media network to connect fans and students to athletes, in the hopes of extending their Tar Heel brand even further. UNC associate director of athletics, Steve Kirschner, describes this as a learning process and one that they believe requires the athletic department to carefully monitor what athletes tweet or put up on their Facebook pages.
“Schools need to do a better job of educating student-athletes about social media,” said Kirschner, who said one student landed in hot water when a vulgar, but private, tweet made its way into the mainstream media when one of the private viewers made it public.
“The players should only talk online as if they were at a press conference,” he added.
Currently, seven players on the Tar Heel basketball team have Twitter accounts. The players have even turned ‘tweeting’ into little competitions, such as which player could get the most followers. But, with the following comes some negativity.
“Things have been said like ‘Maybe if the basketball players played harder than they tweeted, then they would have been better this year,’” described Kirschner.
But as Ginyard remarked, “There will always be someone who doesn’t like it.”
Among the issues raised by Mr. Kirschner was his assertion that athletes could be held liable under HIPPA regulations for any information they may share about a teammate’s health or physical condition. He went on to note that one of the ways he counsels athletes about the content of their posts is the potential that they may be fined by the Federal government for improperly disclosing personal information about a teammate. While such an assertion may be accurate if athletes were employees of an institution, if athletics departments are controlling what athletes say with this kind of rationale, this may prove to be an area of potential legal vulnerability for the athletic department.
As Hessert pointed out, the phenomenon of social networking is not a fad. As such, institutions need to develop media strategies to harness its potential while protecting the image of the institution and athletes. With 55 million tweets a day, Twitter has turned into a forum where athletes can give fans insights on what is going on in their lives (Guynn, 2010). The panel came to the general consensus that when used properly, social media can take an athlete or department to another level- expanding their markets even further. In a time when marketers are trying to brand athletes and expand their reach, Tweeting can take athletes far beyond the limits of what mainstream media once allowed.
Guynn, J. (2010, April 15). Twitter looks to move into mainstream. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 1, 2010 at http://www.latimes.com
OToole, T. (2006, May 19). Public posting of illicit photos revives hazing issue. USA Today. Retrieved May 1, 2010 at http://www.usatoday.com
Read, B. (2006, June 23). Forcing athletes off Facebook. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved May 1, 2010 at http://www.chronicle.com
Staff. (2009, August 25). St. John’s credentials Peter Robert Casey as Twitter blogger for 2009-2010 season. Press release. Retrieved May 1, 2010 at http://www.redstormsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/082509aab.html
Chris Lotsbom is a first year sport media major who writes for Race Results Weekly and is a member of the Ithaca College men’s cross country team. Matt Tracy is a first year sport media major at Ithaca College whose work has appeared in publications such as Baseball Youth and Baseball the Magazine. He also writes his own blog, Mets and Giants News. Ellen J. Staurowsky is professor and graduate chair in the Department of Sport Management & Media at Ithaca College.
