Sport, Athletes and Social Media
Introduction
Social media has become such an integral part of society, that even sports teams and athletes use social media to connect to other forms of media and fans. The All Blacks are one of the most successful rugby teams, not only are the official team social media channels prolific but also the players individual accounts that are used to promote and connect the All Blacks brand with fans and other media. For players social media would have become a part of the job, being able to find the balance between their private and public online lives is a challenge, but some players do it quite well, and manage to share just enough of their private lives to keep fans interested in them as not only players but people. With a brand that spans across continents, it is important for the brand to keep fans in the loop and use social media in order for the fans to feel included in the team- this is called being part of a participatory culture or fandom. It is said that home crowds become an extra player, so its important for the fans to be a virtual player when following the All Blacks on social media. With the developments in new media technologies sports teams and athletes have almost become dependant on them for marketing and brand awareness purposes, as it is an easy and fast way to get their message straight from them to the fans without having to go through traditional media channels.
Athletes and Privacy
Nearly every single All Black player has a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account, or all of them, however with this comes the blurring of their public and private lives. âSocial Networking Sites not only account for a great portion of our online activitiesâ (Albrechtslund 2008 in Papacharissi and Gibson, 2011), âbut the technologies that enable them converge online and offline aspects of our identityâ (Schneider and Zimmer 2006, in Papacharissi and Gibson, 2011). For players the merging of their public or online lives of using social media to promote brands such as Adidas, AIG and Air New Zealand, all major sponsors of the All Blacks, and then their private or offline lives when sharing bits and pieces of their personal lives. This makes it nearly impossible to actually have a private life while in the public eye, and ensures that players have to picka and chose what part of their private lives they wish to share .The tricky part would be balancing when to make something public and when do keep it private .âIn order to stay social, but also manage private and public information fluently, individuals must make critical decisions about how to share information in networked environments that thrive on sharingâ (Papacharissi and Gibson, 2011). When sharing on social media it is important to pick and chose what to share from your private life. One of the All Blacks who does this the best, is Daniel Carter, who boasts more than 400,000 followers on twitter, has found the balance of what to share from his personal life in order to keep fans feeling like they know him, but also keeping some things private. While also doing his fair share of endorsements for brands and sponsors. From tweets ranging from giveaways, photoshoot images for endorsements, and videos for Adidas and other sponsors, to more private millstones like wishing one of his sons a happy birthday and announcing the birth of his second child (See images and videos below for examples of this). With more private events, like for example when Carter and his wife Honor announced the births of both of their children on Twitter, they did so through an image of the childs foot, and writing the childs name and day they were born in the tweet, so while they shared this event with over 400,000 people, they did so a few days after each of the births, while also keeping a bit of privacy by not sharing a full image of the child. âIn modern societies, this distance between public and private continues to dwindle, as contemporary media further blur the lines separating private from public. Social media in particular enable individuals to connect with multiple audiences on online social planes that are neither conventionally public nor entirely privateâ ( Papacharissi and Gibson, 2011). Daniel Carter is the perfect example of a person in the public eye who uses social media actively and has found the balance of sharing the public and private life on social media while the boundaries continue to blur.
Dan Carter announcing the birth of his second child, on April 5. One of the more private parts of his life he has shared on social media. Â (https://twitter.com/dancarter, 2015)
Part of media duties for Air New Zealand, Carter shared a behind the scenes photo from the shoot (Â https://twitter.com/dancarter, 2015).Â
The All Blacks and the Participatory CultureÂ
The All Blacks fans who connect with the All Blacks through social media are part of Participatory culture. Jenkins describes a participatory fandom as âthe most passionately engaged audiences and the social and cultural practises they produceâ (Jenkins, 1992). Anyone who comments, likes, follows, or subscribes to a social media page or channel are part of a participatory culture, for some fans their participation in the culture of the brand creates a âsense of ownership that includes an investment in the creative development of the universeâ (Shefrin, 2007). When it comes to sports teams, the fans are the ones who show up to the game and give the team that extra lift when they need it so it is important to include the fans as much as possible and social media is the easiest and fastest way to do so. The fans are very important to the success of social media for not only the All Blacks themselves, but also their sponsors who are endorsed by the All Blacks, the All Blacks have 3 million likes on their Facebook page (All Blacks Facebook, 2015). This can mean when the All Blacks share anything to do with them as a team or even to do with sponsors, it can reach up to 3 million people who can then comment, like and share this information with even more people, this can be seen as fans being involved in a participatory culture. The fans also participate in the online culture of the All Blacks by requesting videos for the players to be featured in, which can be anything from Question and Answer videos to even seeing what happens during a gym session while the ABs are on tour. The participatory culture of the All Blacks stems so deep that on occasion the fans have been feature in some videos as well. Videos can quite often be a one-way, although they can make the fans feel involved it is also important to physically get the fans involved and meeting some of the team, its also important for the team to see who the fans are that back the All Blacks. So, the All Blacks sometimes run competitions for fans to win an experience with a few of the All Blacks, one fan won a chance to go swimming with the sharks at a local aquarium with 3 All Blacks, all because they engaged with the All Blacks brand over social media. By engaging with the fans through social media, the fans are able to feel like they are part of the team and part of the culture that has developed over the years. The participatory culture that has been developed is vital to the success of the All Blacks social media channels. The engagement that the team has with its fans whether through Facebook or Twitter allows the fans and the players to have better relationship rather than just fans admiring from afar, now they can engage, ask questions and talk to a player as if they know them.
All Blacks and winners of an online competition swim with the sharks, something that would not be possible without the participatory culture the All Blacks have developed. (All Blacks Youtube, 2015)Â
Conclusion
Social media is so important when it comes to the representation of athletes and sports team and how they want to be seen by their fans, other media and even other teams. Social media gives the control back to the brand, social media give brands a âgreater control over the conditions of both production and consumption of their own representationsâ (Koskela in Burgess and Green, 2009). The way the All Blacks and their athletes engage in social media and converse with fans allows them to gain control over their image and not just leave it to their management team. However it is with this control that the lines between what is private and what is public are blurred and knowing what to share and when is a tricky balancing act for most athletes. With the amount of fans the All Blacks have on social media, it was inevitable that a participatory culture would develop, with fans becoming even more engaged with the team and players through social media. Social media has allowed the fans into places where they have never been before like going inside gym sessions and even into the player hotel rooms and what they do when they have time off. These insights make the fans feel less like fans and more like a part of the team, its important to give back to the fans that have supported a team and through social media it has become easier to do so.
ReferencesÂ
All Blacks. (2015). All Blacks Facebook Page. https://www.facebook.com/AllBlacks?fref=ts (accessed 31st March 2015)
All Blacks. (2014). All Blacks Youtube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9izByy4M0Y (accessed 17th April 2015)
Burgess, Jean and Green, Joshua, (2009). Chapter Two : YouTube and the Mainstream Media. In Burgess, Jean and Green, Joshua, Youtube : online video and participatory culture, (pp.15 - 37). Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
Carter, D. (2015). Dan Carter Twitter Account https://twitter.com/dancarter (accessed 16th April, 2015)
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall.
Papacharissi, Zizi and Gibson, Paige L, (2011). Chapter 7 : Fifteen Minutes of Privacy : Privacy, Sociality, and Publicity on Social Network Sites. In Trepte, Sabine and Reinecke, Leonard, Privacy online : perspectives on privacy and self-disclosure in the social web [SpringerLink version], (pp.75 - 89). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag
Shefrin, Elana (2004). Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom : Mapping new congruencies between the Internet and media entertainment culture., Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (3) pp.261-281. (accessed 16th April 2015)