Social Media And Its Impact On Society

Social media has made a massive impact on our culture. One of the areas that has not been affected is professional sports. In today’s world, professional sports teams and players from around the world use social media to connect with their global fan bases. Sports teams attempt to build a larger, stronger fan base by engaging fans through social media sites. Additionally, social media sites allow professional athletes to increase their marketability. However, they can also severely damage their career, personal life, and their ‘brand’ if they do not handle their social media interactions with care (Van Schaik). Twitter and Facebook allow teams and

Moving forward, social media has been a major convenience and reward to virtually everyone. On an individual basis, social media allows friends and family both near and far to communicate with one another. Also, businesses are flourishing through the use of social media. Advertising has never been easier. Horn (2013) states, “Our profession, unlike any time before, is demanding we become social media (…) experts” (1). Horn (2013) also states, “More than half of reporters (55 percent) use Twitter and Facebook to source stories” (1). Social media has greatly benefited business life and personal life.

In the sports world today, a team now understands that they need to be able to reach their fans in an instant, and the best method to do this is now via social media. The team needs to simply send out a tweet, snapchat, Facebook post, or Instagram post to inform their fans about what is happening at practice, the latest player injury, or a game. Some teams have also begun to ask fans about such aspects of their organization as their schedule. An example of this is when the Boston Red Sox took to Twitter and Facebook to ask their fans about a scheduled game on June 4, 2011. “The club quickly received more than 4,300 Facebook likes and 650 Twitter responses from fans overwhelmingly voting in favor of moving the game against Oakland from 7:10 p.m. to 1:10 p.m” (Fisher, 2011, p. 3). This voting allowed for fans to observe a Boston Bruins Stanley Cup Final game that was airing that night. This polling opportunity would come at a time in which taking to social media was at an all-time high. The Red Sox at the time were offering such things during games as “Tweet Your Seat merchandise giveaways and Tweet Your Tunes, in which fans request songs to be played in the ballpark during rain delays” (Fisher, 2011,

Social media has taken the world by storm for the last couple of years and because of that a lot of major league sport teams have needed to revise or make up a brand new social media policy for their players to adhere to. Many major league players, no matter the sport, love using social media to primarily interact with their fans and with social media growing, having stricter policies on the professional players are needed in order to have control of some of the things that are being said on social media. In March of 2012, the Major League Baseball (MLB) association constructed a new social media policy, which consisted of two different policies, one for the major league players and another one for minor league players. For this paper alone,

“Nowadays, fans can buy their tickets on an MLB team’s website, follow the tweets of players, “like” behind-the-scenes photos a team posts on Facebook, comment on a manager’s moves on team-supervised blogs and get updates on open seats, new merchandise and weather for the first pitch. In turn, teams hope that by communicating through social media outlets, they can better know their fans and build a loyal customer base, win or lose” (McKeon).

In my journal authors Stewart T. Cotterill and Rebecca Symes are looking in to see if social media and new technologies can fit into the practice of sports psychology consulting. In this article they look at the different ways to communicate through social media and new technology. They explained that working face to face with certain athletes,  especially professional ones, creates a challenge. This is where they believe social ,media would be helpful. All together the authors seemed to favor these new changes and believe the can improve the practice.

My article discussed the NFL using the popularity of social media to stream their games on Twitter; as well as talked about the contract with BAMtech extending to future plans for the NBA and MLB to do the same. Twitter had 2.1 million viewers of the New York Jets vs Buffalo Bills Thursday night NFL game. Including a pregame show beforehand Twitter had 2.3 million; these consistently growing leagues have found yet another avenue to broaden their product to more countries with streaming on social media. With the exception of a few outliers complaining about the video feed buffering the debut of Thursday Night Football on Twitter was a step in the right direction for sports streaming on Twitter.

Over a third (37%) of Twitter users will buy from a brand they follow.” With the enhanced technology that is found in our society, we constantly have it at our fingertips. Social Media is nonetheless frequently being used and onto our mobile devices. Progressively, social media accounts are created, especially on Twitter. DiMoro examines the social media effect explaining that,” Almost every team, league and sports association has a social media profile on Twitter. From the pros to the minors and from the high school athlete to the retired athlete, social media has been a force in the sports industry landscape.” The effect on social media is one way to market yourself. Therefore, it can directly influence a fan’s perception of that team or athlete. A view on Twitter statistics is quite astonishing and quotes, “During 2013 50% of Tweets regarding TV in the United States, a total of 492 million Tweets were about sports events. Sports events comprised 12 of the Top 20 Most-Tweeted-About TV broadcasts during the year, according to Nielson.” These tweets in regards to sports events are remarkable. Most people appear to be always tweeting about

In this article NFL teams use social media to connect with their fans to help them understand news and current events in the world of their teams. It is

* Utilize social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share videos of athletes, spark conversation and increase shares

As shown in Table 6, 67.7% of informational tweets contained hashtags and 69.4% of promotional tweets contained hyperlinks. In order to manage the professional relationship with the public, NBA clubs were more likely to apply hashtags to their informational tweets and hyperlinks to their promotional tweets. As specific hashtags could be easily searched on Twitter and noticed by followers, they might be a useful tool for releasing information. Many NBA clubs sold tickets and derivative products online; therefore, they tended to direct their followers to their online stores using hyperlinks.

This medium allows sports teams and organizations to interact with their fans on a more personal level than ever before. Social media enhances the consumer experience for sports fans as well: “Sports fans are 67 percent more likely to use Twitter to enhance their viewing experience compared to non-sports fans” (DiMoro, 2015). Even players are having an impact on the interactions with fans, with most players having a strong social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Consequently, the interaction between sports and media becomes much more complicated. With players being able to access and talk to any fan on their social media platforms, franchises and leagues are having to be vigilant in making sure that these interactions follow their guidelines and procedures as these players are representing their teams and the leagues that they play in. Because of this, most leagues have adopted some form of social media policies for their players and teams (Ortiz, 2011). Additionally, this new form of media also gives players a new method of increasing their personal brand and revenue outside of their contracts, with players like Cristiano Ronaldo having huge social media brand values (Dawson,

While many people put off and ignore the issue of social media and its downfalls, others say that people should think about how our lives are being affected by this advancement in technology, including, lack of human contact and precious time being lost due to consumption with social media. Social media is currently a highly controversial topic in which numerous people have mixed feelings. Society has typically viewed new advancements in technology as beneficial and a sign of success within their country. But, has it solely caused successful outcomes, or are there downfalls to these advancements?

Social media is a survival necessity in today’s business world, though different businesses are likely to use it in different ways. In a business specializing in outdoor recreation, participation in social media is vital. The company should have an active presence in social media forums that are popular amongst its primary target market which is likely to be young, active adults. The top social media tool used among teenagers and young adults is Snapchat, followed closely by Facebook and Instagram (Statista, 2016) so the company should prioritize those.

The term ‘social media’ has become a broad-term to describe a large number of online systems that serve as a platform for the generation, and distribution of user-generated content. Social media creates a virtual social space, where a large number of users come together and interact with one another. These interactions can be either structured, such as responses that are moderated on blogs, semi-structured, such as a discussion between an extended network on Facebook, or unstructured, such as the anarchial functioning of Twitter.