Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/33703
Appears in Collections:Management, Work and Organisation Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Applying cognitive analytic theory to understand the abuse of athletes on Twitter
Author(s): Meggs, Jenny
Ahmed, Wasim
Contact Email: wasim.ahmed@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Twitter
high profile sports people
socio ecological theory
negative projections
Issue Date: 27-Nov-2021
Date Deposited: 30-Nov-2021
Citation: Meggs J & Ahmed W (2021) Applying cognitive analytic theory to understand the abuse of athletes on Twitter. Managing Sport and Leisure. https://doi.org/10.1080/23750472.2021.2004210
Abstract: Purpose/rationale: Athletes and governing bodies have raised ethical concerns related to the negative psychological effects of Twitter for professional athletes. There remained a need to systematically understand the processes involved in negative fan athlete social media interactions by categorising social media data using psychological theory. This study aimed to examine the attributional (specific or global negative comments) and contextual (sport-specific and general life context or “no context”) factors of Twitter content that were Tweeted by fans about high profile sports people. Research methods: In order to retrieve preliminary social media data to explore this phenomenon, Tweet data was collected data using Twitter’s Search API related to the top 10 highest-paid athletes (a crude initial ranking of “high profile”) as ranked by Forbes, 2018 and the data was retrieved on Friday 26th of April 2019. The search and retrieval strategy used a combination of sentiment analysis and qualitative filtering in order to isolate negative tweets directed at sports athletes. Results and findings: Preliminary findings highlighted that negative tweets directed at sports athletes can be accurately classified into three broad themes: (i) global negative projections (no context) (ii) global negative projections (sport performance context), and (iii) specific negative projections (personal context). The socio ecological theory was used as a holistic model to understand the broader processes involved in fan athlete social media interaction when considering these types of negative engagement between fans and athletes. Implications: Twitter can be used as a means for the public to direct negative projections towards athletes and our study puts forward a number of applied and research recommendations for researchers and sport management staff to educate and protect athletes from the negative consequences of “twitter abuse”.
DOI Link: 10.1080/23750472.2021.2004210
Rights: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Notes: Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Online
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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