Why Social Media is Not Good but GREAT for Women's Sports
 | posted by AnnGaff, a Women Talk Sports blogger About AnnGaff: Chief Technical Officer, Women Talk Sports. I competed in Track & Field and Cross-Country in college at the University of Nebraska and competed professionally in Track & Field (3000m Steeplechase) fr...more |
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There has been a lot of buzz lately, especially in the Women Talk Sports community, about social media and whether or not it is good for women's sports. The buzz got louder after the Tucker Center held their annual Distinguished Lecture Series and broadcasted it live for us all to see. The topic? "Facing Off Over Facebook: The Impact of Social Media on Women Sports." (Watch the replay of the broadcast HERE and a big thank-you to the Tucker Center for allowing us all to see and participate in this!)
There seems to be a great deal of skepticism surrounding social media and women's sports. "Is it the ugly stepsister to mainstream coverage, which won't cover women's sports?" "Men don't have to use Twitter to engage their fans and in fact, their leagues discourage it." "Male athletes have way more followers than female athletes." "Are they really gaining more fans or is no one really listening?" "Are female athletes changing the public's perception of them via social media or are they just re-emphasizing their non-athletic traits, which mainstream media already does?"
I have tried to look at social media and women's sports from different angles and every time, I come up with the same conclusion that social media is GREAT for women's sports...just as GREAT as it has been for sports (male and female) that aren't considered interesting or important enough by the mainstream media, such as track & field, soccer and mixed martial arts (MMA). What happened with these sports is that their fans got fed up waiting to see their sport on NBC or ABC or CBS or ESPN and started their own communities (ONLINE, through SOCIAL MEDIA and related means) and found ways to either 1) cover the sport themselves or 2) support the channels who were covering their sport (such as Universal Sports, HDNet, Versus, Fox Soccer Channel, etc).
Communities such as these are highly active in social media outlets, such as Twitter, because they HAVE to be in order to keep up on where their sport is being covered...unlike Football, where every Saturday, Sunday and Monday, games are shown on major networks in primetime slots, competitions for sports like Track & Field, MMA and Soccer (and women's sports in general) may be televised on an obscure channel at an obscure time OR only online. The community has to stick together to inform each other when and where they can watch their sport.
Since these fans need social media to keep up with their sport, the sports' athletes really have a unique opportunity to bond with these fans via social media. They can become a part of the community themselves...and guess what? These athletes are perfect for social media communities because they're more....human. They aren't getting paid millions of dollars (usually). They're not on a bunch of TV commercials (usually). They aren't starring in movies or starting their own clothing lines (usually). They're not household names (usually). So these athletes can benefit from these social communities which provide a support system otherwise not found except among family and close friends. And when they do score a role in a movie, the community rallies around them and pats them on the back, proud to see their underdog rising to the top..and to see their sport get some attention.
Notice my emphasis on the word "their"? These communities are possessive of their sport and its athletes. They're defensive of them. Why? Because they see the beauty of their sport, they see how hard the athletes work for less money and fame than their counterparts in more popular sports, and they take ownership of those athletes and the sport itself. They are rebels with a cause (think track fans secretly watching the Zurich meet on universalsports.com and sending frantic and excited tweets during work or MMA fans staying up all night to watch Dream live from Japan on HDNet and flood the message boards with their reactions) as opposed to a mob with an entitlement complex (think NFL fans wanting their games on NBC at noon on Sunday with hot women cheerleading as they play armchair quarterback and groan about their Fantasy standings). And I come from a family full of NFL fans, so I'm not saying they're evil, but when people join together in support of a common cause, they take less for granted, that's all. And the athletes in this case are seen as fellow rebels, not as out-of-reach superstars subject to idolization and/or objectification.
So the communities benefit by getting to know the athletes up-close-and-personal (send an at-reply to Shaq and chances are you won't hear anything back because he's soooo busy with all his other messages. Send one to @candace_parker or @AaronandSanya and you'll probably get a reply, from the athlete herself), and the athletes benefit from a very supportive community that, once it gets loud enough, can finally garner the attention of major media outlets...and even if they don't, do we really NEED to garner the attention of major media outlets anymore? Why, when we can broadcast and commentate on our sports ourselves, as long as we stay connected to each other and the web?
If major media outlets won't cover women's sports the way we want them to, we just have to do it ourselves! That's the goal with Women Talk Sports, and I hope we are making good progress in that direction. With the internet, the minority rules. What the minority wants, the minority can get if they are just willing to connect with each other. Think about it: someone is always at the game that can tell everyone else what happens, at the very least. If the game is broadcasted online, we can all spread the word and support not just the teams playing but also the site broadcasting it so that it can happen again and again. It's better to watch online anyway - no commercials, no cutting down a 3-hour track meet to 30 minutes of highlights...you get the picture.
Bottom line, what's GREAT about social media is that it lets us have women's sports OUR WAY.
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- Filed Under:
- SportsPLUS, OpEd, Media/Marketing
There are 8 comments on this post. Join the discussion!
thatgirlisfunny
Chic Runner
AnnGaff
Danica - you stop it right now! And we need to get back in the habit of seeing each other once a week :)
Q McCall
Here's something that I've thought a lot about:
"With the internet, the minority rules. What the minority wants, the minority can get if they are just willing to connect with each other."
This is something I've thought about a lot and I think it's interesting that often times with social media, the minority is able to mobilize people, but has a much more difficult time actually bringing about the results they seek.
The most obvious example I can think of through my emerald colored eyes is the whole Seattle Sonics debacle here in Seattle -- they did a great job of mobilizing support for keeping the Sonics here, but in the end the powers-that-be (ownership and politicians) carried more weight.
So I suppose my follow up question would be, "How and when does the minority get what it wants via social media mobilizing?"
madiq
Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi
AnnGaff
Great question. I'm sure the powers-that-be often win out because of MONEY, which is something you don't need to form a community via social media but something you DO need to finance a team/league/competition.
However, the minority can still get what it wants if it's willing to be very patient, because without lots of money to throw at a cause, it's going to take more time to get results. It's human nature.
Flotrack.org and its effect on the coverage of Track and Field is one of a few examples that comes to my mind. These guys started going to track meets three years ago and video-taping from the stands and putting their videos online for everyone to watch. They committed to "a new video every day" which brought people back to their site. Today, they are an indispensable piece of the track and field community, where fans go to see interviews of their favorite athletes and to watch live coverage of meets they would otherwise not be able to see.
In addition, there has been a trend in the past couple of years of more and more track meets, road races and cross-country meets being made accessible by other entities...in my opinion, because it became very apparent that there was a demand for it, thanks to the popularity of Flotrack and other sites where diehard fans set up camp, like Letsrun.com. So networks like Universal Sports started showing full-length broadcasts of major meets taking place in Europe in the summer and every minute of major marathons like the NYC Marathon this weekend...online AND on their TV channel. The next step is to get more cable companies to carry their channel. (I'm lucky I have Verizon, which carries it)
It's now to the point where, during the World Championships this past August, I watched the live coverage on Versus instead of the primetime NBC coverage because it was LIVE and it was BETTER...they didn't sugarcoat and package it up for TV and cut out everything except certain high-profile events...no, the live coverage was of the competition I came to see...all of it. I totally ignored the NBC coverage that we've all thought we wanted for so long.
So I think social media creates a ripple that eventually hits the right people and effects real change, if the community is loud enough. Similar to women and minorities in the work place, women's sports and "niche sports" have to work harder than more popular mainstream sports and prove ourselves more emphatically in order to be considered for similar treatment.
AnnGaff