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  • Ryan 1:50 am on February 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , breaking news, , sports,   

    Sports Blogging and the Effects of Social Media 

    This research project was put together in order to understand the world of sports blogging, breaking news and the effect of social media (more specifically, Twitter.) I was fortunate enough to interview four bloggers that range from New York Yankees coverage to New York Knicks coverage. Originally, I was hoping to interview professional journalists and bloggers, however the nature of their blogs along with their on-going news coverage disallowed them from responding to my e-mails. Since both the NBA and the MLB were experiencing more activity than normal (NBA had the All-Star Game in Houston, while the MLB started Spring Training in various locations in Florida and Texas,) the reporters/bloggers on ESPN New York or SNY.TV were unable to be reached for an interview.

    That being said, I was able to speak with four bloggers, each with a different viewpoint, a different blogging style, and a different way of coverage. From there, I was able to distinguish the differences in sports reporting along with how Twitter has affected how they have reported news over the past few years. (More …)

     

    • mdeseriis 10:58 am on February 26, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Ryan, thank you for writing this very clear, well-researched and thoughtful travelogue. It is unfortunate that the more professional writers did not get back to you but it is understandable given the moment.

      As for the bloggers you interviewed, I would say that their answers are not surprising at all. In your conclusion, you write “blogs aren’t used to break news anymore.” But was it ever the case? The primary function of blogs has never been to break news or investigative reporting. There are exceptions of course–i.e., occasionally well-connected bloggers (usually former industry insiders) get access to information and stories that no one else has. But by and large bloggers do precisely what your interviewees say they do. They access sources where everyone else can find them (mostly Twitter nowadays), sort them, and compile them in a narrative form so that readers can make sense of what is going on without having to go and check every Twitter feed.

      On top of that, these bloggers interject their subjectivity in their writing style. Since these blogs are not about breaking news, their value lies almost exclusively in the perspective they add to a given phenomenon. In this respect, it is no surprise that some of these bloggers define themselves as fans who speak primarily to other fans. (We might even call it a subculture.) All of this is to say that while your travelogue is very well-researched and developed, the conclusion does not really surprise me.

  • mlubin37 1:10 am on January 31, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , sports,   

    I have narrowed my travelogue research down to looking at individual (and still possibly team) athletes on Twitter. I will focus mainly on how these accounts influence their fans, and go into depth in looking at how it changes fans perspectives on these celebrities – either for the good or for the bad.

    My research questions will be the following:

    1. Who is your favorite athlete you follow on Twitter? Why?
    2. Have you ever unfollowed an athlete on Twitter? Why?
    3. Do you feel as though you know more about the athletes you follow on Twitter outside their athletic career? In other words, do you think Twitter helps you to actually get to know more about their personality? Why or why not?
    4. Since you started following certain athletes on Twitter, do you think of them as less of a celebrity? Why?
    5. Have you ever followed an athlete/s on Twitter strictly because of what they tweet/ you have heard they tweet? Did this make you like them more as an athlete?

     

    • Ryan P. 3:25 am on January 31, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I’m fairly intrigued to see the results you get in this research. The only concern I have is that while you have narrowed down to individual athletes, it’ll be tough to get a smaller-cluster of Twitter users unless you specifically track down fans of that specific athletes either by hashtags or by going through that athlete’s followers list.

      Aside from that, I think it might be interesting to see if users use Twitter more to be updated with an athlete’s daily events or if they glance at it every once in a while to check how he or she is doing. I know some people who will constantly check in on an athlete because he or she loves the athlete a lot.

    • napuah 9:13 am on January 31, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I like your idea here, but I agree with Ryan that finding such a specialized group might be hard. Once you find those users though, it should be an interesting poll of information regarding athletes on twitter. I know a handful of superfans for things other than sports and they have even formed personal relationships with “celebrities” over twitter because they tweet at them so much. My old roommate got backstage passes to the Dancing With The Stars tour because she was so involved in conversation some of the dancers felt like they knew her and invited her backstage to meet them when the tour was in Boston. That may not be the case for major athletes, but you could find some interesting results for sure.

      • mdeseriis 11:15 am on January 31, 2013 Permalink | Reply

        I think that Napua is onto something here. Why don’t you look closely at the tweets of a few athletes, identify the most obsessive followers, and try to make contact with them? This will allow you to see whether Twitter is really changing the relationship between celebrities and the fan base.

        Clay Shirky describes “celebrity” as an imbalance between the number of inbound links (attention) and outgoing links. Celebrities are celebrities precisely because they cannot pay attention and get back to everybody. Yet some people manage to develop a somewhat “personal” relationship to them.

        Media scholars use the term “parasocial” to refer to a relationship that is a simulation of a real relationship. So it would be interesting to see whether Twitter allows for such pseudo-relationships to become more real and how celebrities manage the potential intrusiveness of such medium. A well-known story is that of the so-called “Bling Ring” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bling_Ring).

  • Ryan 5:32 pm on January 22, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ryan punzalan, , sports,   

    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:

    1. Where do you get your news from?
    2. How often do you use Twitter to check on news about your favorite sports team?
    3. What do you consider to be “breaking news” and who do you get this information from most of the time?
    4. In your opinion, when does “breaking news” become a normal topic of discussion? Why?
    5. Do you still use websites such as Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, CBS Sportsline, etc. as a way of receiving sports news?
    6. 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 10:52 pm on January 23, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      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?

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