Elite Female Athletes’ Perceptions of New Media Use Relating to Their Careers: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Today’s elite athletes face increasing demands to develop a new media presence in order to build their personal brand and connect with a wide variety of stakeholders. Myriad studies have focused on athletes’ new media use by examining content posted online; however, few studies have examined new media usage from the athletes’ perspectives. Using the theoretical framework of self-presentation theory to uncover athletes’ new media perceptions, goals, and strategies, semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted with six elite female athletes training for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Findings revealed that although athletes had goals for sharing their lives, developing connections, sponsorship, and self-promotion, they did not employ specific strategies to meet these goals or attempt to measure whether their goals were met. Gender-related findings included feeling pressure to post sexually suggestive images and receiving unwanted private communications from male fans. The implications are discussed within the paper.

Social Media as a Personal Branding Tool: A Qualitative Study of Student-Athletes’ Perceptions and Behaviors

“…Considering the importance of athletes' social media use, numerous publications have examined professional and elite athletes' personal branding efforts carried out via social media and found that they actively were presenting and portraying themselves to develop their personal brands (Agyemang & Williams, 2016;Coche, 2014;Davies & Mudrick, 2017;Geurin, 2017;Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016;Green, 2016;Hodge & Walker, 2015). For example, Hodge and Walker (2015) discovered that professional golfers acknowledged the importance of having strong personal branding skills but perceived a number of challenges to building an effective person-JADE Bowling Green State University -https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/jade/ al brand; these challenges included a lack of knowledge, time, and support.…”

“…Additionally, the athletes felt that it was necessary to understand both their target audience and the specific features of each social media platform in order to develop an effective personal branding strategy. Geurin (2017) found that elite female athletes used social media to interact with fans and to share their athletic and personal lives with followers. While no specific strategy was utilized, the elite female athletes appeared to care about producing authentic posts to directly connect with followers (Geurin, 2017).…”

“…Geurin (2017) found that elite female athletes used social media to interact with fans and to share their athletic and personal lives with followers. While no specific strategy was utilized, the elite female athletes appeared to care about producing authentic posts to directly connect with followers (Geurin, 2017). Each of these three studies revealed a lack of athlete knowledge with regard to personal branding via social media and ultimately called for a formal and effective social media training program for athletes.…”

“…Athletes' use of social media in terms of both frontstage and backstage becomes highly important in building and developing their professional brands (Shreffler et al, 2016). The extant literature has focused on athletes' self-presentation through social media in various contexts, such as professional athletes (Green, 2016;Lebel & Danylchuk, 2012), elite athletes (Geurin, 2017;Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016), and female athletes (Coche, 2014;Lebel & Danylchuk, 2014;Shreffler et al, 2016). In a similar sense, self-presentation theory should provide a sa-Bowling Green State University -https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/jade/ JADE lient lens to scholars when examining how student-athletes present themselves and utilize different social media platforms for personal branding purposes.…”

“…Potential benefits of using social media for athletes have been highlighted, including interacting with fans, followers, and fellow athletes, constructing a public image, and presenting both athletic and personal lives (Browning & Sanderson, 2012;Geurin, 2017;Lebel & Danylchuk, 2014). However, there is limited knowledge about positive aspects of social Antonio S. Williams…”