Untangling International Sport Social Media Use: Contrasting U.S. and Chinese Uses and Gratifications Across Four Platforms

Abstract

This study of 409 sports fans from the United States and China contrasts uses sought and gratifications obtained within four different social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter (in the United States) and WeChat and Weibo (in China). Results indicated that each of the platforms function in starkly contrasting manners. In the United States, Facebook scored higher than Twitter on every motivational measure; in China, WeChat was found to be better at fostering camaraderie, entertainment, habitual use, and maintaining relationships, while Weibo was found to be better for arousal. Moreover, Chinese respondents reported higher gratifications obtained than American respondent on all 12 factors. Implications are offered for uses and gratifications research as well as sports media scholarship.

Social Media Discourse About Division-I Football Players’ Early Exit Announcements: The Role of Expressed Fandom

“…These issues are evaluated as wins or losses and responded to in-kind. Such an extension of this framework recognizes that secondary competitions are opportunities to express fandom, reinforce team cultures, connect with athletes, and make sense of the sporting landscape (Billings et al, 2019;Sanderson 2013;Slavich et al, 2018). These events may increase in salience during off seasons or periods in which actual play is of less significance.…”

“…Social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are popular venues for fans to consume sport (Billings, Broussard, Xu, & Xu, 2019;Tang & Cooper, 2018), display identity (Larkin & Fink, 2016;Slavich, O'Hallarn, & Morehead, 2018), and manage group norms in response to team performance and athlete behavior (Foote, Butterworth, & Sanderson, 2017;Sanderson 2013). Sport fans express diverse identities that fluctuate between ardent support (Mudrick, Miller, & Atkin, 2016) and vitriolic criticism of teams and athletes (Sanderson & Truax, 2014).…”

When Should a Brand Cut Ties With a Scandalized Endorser?

“…Amazon Mechanical Turk is a useful online platform that can recruit participants with diverse backgrounds (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011), and participants’ demographics are more similar to the population in the United States compared to other online panels (Ipeirotis, 2010). In fact, Amazon Mechanical Turk has been utilized commonly in the sport management studies (Billings, Broussard, Xu, & Xu, 2019; Brown et al, 2018). The authors employed a 2 (response type: maintenance vs. termination) × 2 (scandal type: competence-relevant vs. competence-irrelevant) between-subject experimental design.…”

Guest editorial

“…Furthermore, social media research in sport management has addressed the strategic marketing activities of sports organizations and athletes on social media platforms. Relationship marketing with customers and fans using social media platforms (Abeza et al , 2019; Achen, 2019) and success factors of marketing communication via social media (Billings et al , 2019; Courthouts et al , 2019; Laurell and Söderman, 2018; Teo et al , 2019) were examined. Social media research addressing brand management mainly investigated how sports organizations and athletes build their brands and develop their brand images using social media (Anagnostopoulos et al , 2018; Grimmer and Clavio, 2019; Hayes et al , 2020; Hayes and Blaszka, 2018; Na et al , 2020; Srivardhana, 2019; Thompson et al , 2018).…”