An examination of athletes' Instagram posts during a major sporting competition

Abstract

Background: Social media is an uprising avenue for fan engagement. As such, it is necessary that athletes have proper utilisation of their social media accounts to help them build a personal brand. Purpose: This study seeks to examine athlete’s Instagram posts during a major sporting event, and determine if there was any change in the nature of their posts. Method: A content analysis is used to analyse the Instagram posts, and photos and captions of the posts were analysed concurrently. Instagram posts of 10 male Olympic swimmers have been chosen for analysis following specific criteria. Posts from 3 different time periods were captured, 3 months pre event, during the month of the event and 3 months post event. They are then categorise under 6 prominent themes that emerged from the research by Smith & Sanderson (2015), namely “Humanitarian”, “Family”, “Personality”, “Athlete”, “Endorser” and “Socialite”. Results: After analysis, 2 new categories emerged, namely “Witty Comments” and “Publicity”. Results from the Cochran’s Q test have shown that posts under “Humanitarian” and “Socialite” showed a statistically significant difference in the proportion of posts over time, where χ2(2, N=10)=12.25, p=0.002 and χ2 (2, N=10)=6.25, p=0.044 respectively. The changes in these two types of posts are due to the change in different focus of an athlete’s life over the various periods of time. Conclusion: The findings of such trends can allow various stakeholders to better utilise such tools and help enhance athletes personal branding at different points of time.