On May 31, 2021, Naomi Osaka, one of the top-ranked female tennis players, and one of the highest-paid female athletes in the world, announced her withdrawal from the French Open on her social media (Twitter) account, citing mental health issues. There exists a stigma around mental health; and people suffering from mental health conditions often experience “discrimination and stigma” (World Health Organization, 2019). Such disclosures by a noted sportsperson provide an opportunity to help combat the stigma. The present study uses unsupervised machine learning and qualitative thematic analysis to analyze 11,800 English language responses to her tweet. Results indicate that Osaka’s tweet mostly garnered a lot of support and encouragement. However, there also existed some negative comments. Additionally, 40% of the negative comments were disseminated by bot-like automated accounts. Practical implications for sports communication are also discussed.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (2020a) declared COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus, a global pandemic. Using a content analysis (N = 3,056) and social network analysis, we explored the role of Twitter in disseminating stigma messages about the disease and the country where the virus originated. In particular, we explored four stigma-related cues and information-related cues in message content during the pre-pandemic period (December 31, 2019-February 10, 2020. Results indicate that in the dataset, 37.6% of the Tweets had stigma cues and 34.1% Tweets contained information messages. Laypersons with Twitter handles were the primary source of stigma messages. Social media influencers were one of the primary sources for both stigma and information messages. Media organizations were also one of the primary sources of information messages.
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