As the world feels the impact of the coronavirus, the role of sport and philanthropy has merged as a venue for generating social impact and providing relief to those in need. This research focuses on the social responsibility and philanthropic mobilization of professional athletes to address urgent social needs during the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, the study focuses on the role that social media plays in the communication of these socially responsible activities developed by professional athletes. This study examined how the various ways that athletes are giving back and the messaging strategies related to the impact of COVID-19. By doing that, the authors identified three key areas: Awareness Raising and Advocacy; Calls to Action and Engagement; Information Sharing and Communication. Other relevant insights into philanthropic and social responsibility strategies and approaches were identified (e.g., direct giving, fundraising, awareness raising, mobilizing networks, or information sharing). The paper also discusses the potential responses and outcomes garnered by communicating these efforts and offers insights into how professional athletes can maximize their social impact around the world during crisis during crises such as the COVID-19.

Social media have become an increasingly popular tool for athletes to share content with their followers. This study's purpose was to contribute to the understanding of athlete communication on Instagram by focusing on the communication strategies of the Spanish Winter Olympic team during 2018, when the PyeongChang Olympic Games were held. Content analysis was performed on 990 Instagram posts collected through the Instagram Scraper tool, analysing a wide variety of data such as the number of likes and comments, the format of the publication, the use hashtags or the text of each post. The data was processed in Excel. Although the analysis is in process, some preliminary results can be provided. All the 13 athletes from the Spanish Olympic team who participated in the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games use Instagram. His followers range from 1,413 by Imanol Rojoy to 259,432 by Javier Fernández. In 2018 they published on Instagram between 24 and 191 posts, a total of 990 contributions (90.61% of images and 9.39% of videos), which generated more than 2 and a half million likes and almost 40,000 comments. Findings from these preliminary results suggest that, in general, Instagram is revealed as an effective tool for Olympic athletes when it comes to generating visibility among their audiences and fan engagement increases during the celebration of an international mega event as the Olympic Winter Games. Relationship between interaction and the post type or resources usedRegarding the relationship between the post type and the interaction, it is verified that photos obtain similar average of likes, while, videos have received a higher average of comments.On the other hand, it has been observed that the posts that used hashtags (#) obtained a little higher average of likes, reaching an average of 2810,96 likes per post, compared to the posts that did not use hashtags, which obtained an average of 2306,65 likes. In this case the result is similar when it comes to the average of comments, the posts that used hashtags received an average of 41,34 comments, in comparison with the posts that did not use hashtags, which received an average of 34,96 comments.

Social networks are a fundamental tool that organizations use for promotional, informative and relational purposes. From this last point of view, social networks allow organizations to gain visibility and generate interaction with audiences, thus contributing to maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with them. In the sports field, as in others, the use of social networks is widespread not only by sports clubs or entities, but also by individual athletes. Instagram in particular is one of the networks that has experienced the greatest growth in recent years and that is why, from the international academic field, attention has been paid to the use of this network in the sports field. Based on this approach, this research analyzes the use of Instagram by Spanish athletes of recognized prestige, with the aim of evaluating its effectiveness as a mechanism to generate interaction and promote relations with the public. From this perspective, questions such as the effectiveness of Instagram to generate visibility or the influence of various elements, such as the type of post or the complementary resources used in the text, in the generation or increase of interaction are raised. The study focuses on a sample of 17 Spanish adult athletes who received a “Premio Nacional del Deporte” (Rey Felipe, Reina Letizia, Rey Juan Carlos and Reina Sofía) between 2013 and 2017. For each of the selected athletes a compilation of all their Instagram posts for the year 2018, using the Instagram Scraper tool, was made and an analysis of emission and reception was carried out. Regarding the emission, aspects such as the number of published posts, the type of post (image or video) and the use of resources such as hashtags, mentions and emoticons were taken into account, while from the point of view of reception they were collected data of number of followers, likes and comments. The results show a high diversity both in the number of published posts, which range between 39 and 348 entries per year, and in the number of followers, which varies notably depending on the notoriety of the athlete, from the little more from 16,000 by Ruth Beithia to over 27 million Andrés Iniesta. There is a majority preference for the use of images (82% of posts) compared to the use of videos, although the use of complementary resources such as hashtags, mentions and emoticons is highly variable depending on the athlete and does not seem to significantly influence in generating interaction. It is also verified that the members of the sample are not very active in following other accounts, since the number of followers is barely over 1,200 at best. The total of the publications accumulates almost 230 million likes and more than a million and a half comments, although the difference in results per athlete in these indicators is highly variable. In general terms, more followers generate more likes and more comments, although this increase is not proportional and no significant increase in interaction is generated from very high numbers of followers. These results corroborate the interest of Instagram as a network with high capacity to generate visibility and interaction with audiences, although the popularity of the athlete influences, in the first place, the number of followers and, therefore, the possibilities of interaction.

Durante las crisis de salud pública como la actual pandemia de COVID-19, los gobiernos y las autoridades sanitarias necesitan métodos rápidos y precisos para comunicarse con los ciudadanos. Si bien las redes sociales pueden servir como una herramienta útil para una comunicación eficaz durante los brotes de enfermedades, pocos estudios han abordado cómo los Ministerios de Salud utilizan estas plataformas. Este estudio pretende explorar el uso de Facebook por parte de los Ministerios de Salud de los países más poblados de la Unión Europea y la respuesta del público en términos de interacción y seguimiento durante las diferentes etapas de la pandemia de COVID-19 a lo largo del año 2020. Se ha trabajado con la totalidad de las publicaciones realizaras por los 10 países más poblados de la Unión Europea en el año 2020, utilizando la herramienta Crowdtangle para la generación de la base de datos. Los resultados muestran la agilidad que estos países han tenido para dar respuesta a la comunicación exigida por los ciudadanos durante situaciones excepcionales como la pandemia generada por el coronavirus y también el gran aumento en el seguimiento de las fuentes oficiales de sanidad por parte de la población. Así, esta investigación proporciona unos primeros indicios sobre la estrategia de comunicación seguida por los principales Ministerios de Salud de Europa durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Estos resultados tienen implicaciones para los investigadores, los gobiernos, las organizaciones de salud y los profesionales con respecto a sus prácticas de comunicación durante las pandemias.

En las últimas décadas ha surgido un movimiento global de verificación (fact-checking) que tiene como objetivo combatir la desinformación. Estas organizaciones utilizan las redes sociales para visibilizar el contenido verificado. Este trabajo pretende conocer las características de los contenidos publicados por los verificadores españoles en Instagram, indagar qué factores pueden predecir la interacción y evaluar la importancia que a sus comunidades. Para ello, se han analizado todas las publicaciones de los fact-checkers españoles ligados a la IFCN en Instagram durante el año 2021 (n=655). Los datos se han extraído utilizando Crowdtangle y posteriormente se ha llevado a cabo un análisis de contenido, tanto cualitativo como cuantitativo, para observar cómo los formatos, temáticas y otras variables afectan al engagement de los usuarios. Los resultados muestran que las publicaciones relacionadas con la política y legislación han sido las más publicadas, aunque son las publicaciones sobre racismo y xenofobia las que reciben mayor engagement. Por otra parte, se ha observado que los fact-checkers no utilizan Instagram como una red social para generar conversación, sino más bien para presentar sus verificaciones de un modo visual.