Sports and media have gone hand in glove for centuries. From Cherokee stickball, to modern football, basketball, and world soccer (football for non-Americans), sports have been praised, criticized, dissected, diagnosed, reported on, published about, and recorded. Nowadays, in the sports world, there’s very little that the media does not showcase or print, making privacy limited. Athletes and the sports world should care about the media, because it has the ability to make or break a career. Media outlets pounce on even the slightest negative remark or gesture made by an athlete. At times such as these, it can be difficult for athletes to come back from such backlash.
One example of how the media can impact sports is related to Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem. Kaepernick was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers when, at the start of a preseason game in 2016, he sat for the National Anthem. According to Wikipedia Kaepernick sat in order to, “protest against racial injustice, police brutality, and systematic oppression in the country.” He then started to kneel during the national anthem throughout the remainder of the preseason and into the regular season. The news media capitalized on Kaepernick's kneeling. Many Americans regarded him as a hero, standing up for the oppressed communities, and being a voice for those who couldn’t speak for themselves. Some saw Kaepernick’s deeds as rebellious, disrespectful, and unbecoming. Kaepernick was released from the 49ers and became a free agent, due to the uproar he started.
Paul Lazarsfield, a leader in the field of Communication Theory, came up with a two-step Flow Theory on how media and personal influence can affect the opinions of others. Lazarsfield claims that there are opinion holders and opinion followers. In our case the opinion holders are athletes, and the opinion followers are those who, interestingly enough, “follow” these athletes on their social media platforms. The athletes have opinions on what is going on in the world, such as politics, people, and other sports. When the athletes post their opinions, those who follow them become opinion followers when they see their own opinions through the lens of those athletes. Thus, the opinions of the few become the opinions of the many, and when translated by the many, the few can be misinterpreted.
In our day and age, those in the spotlight have to be extra careful with what they say, what actions they take. Due to the fact that in our media-obsessed generation, stars must be ridiculously cautious with what they post on social media. In an article by La Trobe University entitled The Impact of Social Media and Digital Media on Sport, Author Narrelle Harris states, “If social media is making it possible for fans to be more engaged, it’s also making it possible for sporting proffesionals to be more accountable for their public comments and the way in which they, in return, engage with their fans and wider community.” While sports fans can follow their favorite players on any number of social media, the athletes themselves are under high pressure to keep those fans entertained. Some of these athletes have tripped up on social media. For example, in 2012, a Greek triple jumper named Voula Papachristou was booted from the Olympic Games after a racist tweet in which she apologized for saying it was a “joke”, according to the Daily Mail News.
Not only on public social media, athletes must be careful on private media outlets as well. According to Sportcenter's instagram page and article by Awesome Sideaction, Von Miller, the Denver Broncos star defensive player, was using a texting platform (such as IMessage) when he texted his girlfriend, who was pregnant with his child, saying she was “lame as h*ll” and he hoped she had a miscarriage. Von Miller’s girlfriend had taken a picture of the texts and used them against him in order to get dirt on his name. Usually, text messages are private and seemingly safe, but once a text is sent, the receiver has a written account of what was said by the sender.
Because of the way media and news sources are seemingly seeking to find an unfortunate athlete to talk about, athletes need to take extra caution in their online conduct. As we have seen, even a small remark meant as a joke can get an athlete kicked out of the very thing they’ve worked all their lives striving towards, namely Miss Papachristou at the 2012 Olympic Games. Hopefully, in light of these examples, sports players will realize the fragility of their stance within the media community and act with dignity and self-control, knowing that their reputations are, at best, resting on thin ice.
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