Sports, Social Media, and Breaking News. Is it really “breaking news?”
As a sports lover and socia media enthusiast, I always found it interesting when the two worlds combined. Social media has played a big role in sports news over the past two or three years, thanks to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The angle that I wanted to do further research on is how Twitter has increasingly brought breaking news to other users in a matter of seconds.
Before Twitter was popular, people received injury reports, trade rumors, or any form of free agent signings by sports websites or television programs like ESPN. Back then, everyone would receive those reports at the same time, from most likely the same source. Along with the rise of the usage of Twitter as a news media source, many reporters have been hired by team-specific blogs or web sources that create Twitter accounts specifically for the teams. Additionally, beat reporters for larger newspaper publications have Twitter accounts that report on the teams itself. For larger, more broader sports news, companies such as ESPN, Fox Sports, and CBS have created accounts that link various stories, especially breaking news to their main websites, seemingly as a redirect.
For my travelogue, I would monitor sports Twitter accounts, specifically those related to New York sports. I follow many New York-related teams’ Twitter accounts in terms of bloggers, reporters, fans, and everyone in between. I feel that I can narrow it down to New York teams since they have a variety of sports teams located in the New York City area. Not to mention, I’m from the area, so I would know who to interview and who I would need to interact with in order to find the proper information for the travelogue.
These would be some of the questions I would use in my travelogue either by way of interview or a survey:
- Where do you get your news from?
- How often do you use Twitter to check on news about your favorite sports team?
- What do you consider to be “breaking news” and who do you get this information from most of the time?
- In your opinion, when does “breaking news” become a normal topic of discussion? Why?
- Do you still use websites such as Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, etc. as a way of receiving sports news?
- Do you use television programs such as Sportscenter to receiving sports news?
I would hope to talk to editors of New York-based bloggers or reporters, specifically from sites such as Posting and Toasting, Amazin’ Avenue, ESPN New York, or The Jets Blog. Many of those blogs are part of a collection of blogs (SB Nation, SNY, or ESPN.) By tackling various websites, teams, reporters, and fans, I will hopefully find a conclusion about where people get their news from, how they get their news from, and if breaking news today has evolved to something more instant rather than approximate.
I would appreciate any and all comments. I can open up to a different form of social media, reach out to a much broader audience, narrow it down to specific sports, etc. Let me know!
Thanks!
mdeseriis is discussing. 
NEW MEDIA RESEARCH STUDIO 
mdeseriis 10:52 pm on January 23, 2013 Permalink |
Ryan, I think your proposal has potential but you need to clear out what kind of research method you are going to be using. On the one hand, you seem to be interested in a quantitative analysis of how social media and blogs affect the consumption of sports news. To be honest with you, I don’t think a quantitative analysis of changing patterns of usage is something you can put together in such a short timeframe.
On the other hand, you say that you know specific individuals that might be knowledgeable in this field. If that is the case, first you need to clarify whether these individuals are users like you or bloggers. Then I would try to ask them questions that are a little more sophisticated than the ones you ask above. For example, it is fairly obvious that sports fans rely both on traditional media and social media. What is less obvious is how this wider availability of sources (such as the players’ personal Twitter feeds) is affecting the journalistic profession. From the links you posted above, it seems like that everyone can aggregate the information that comes directly from the players or other insiders and produce a blog. But what is the value and influence of those blogs? Do players and teams read them, feed them stories or feel compelled to disavow them? Do mainstream sports journalists cite them as legitimate sources?