Social Media and Its Impact on Sports Journalism

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Introduction

The assignment purposes to analyze the impact of social media on the sports journalismby means of analysis of secondary data.The rise of social media in the past decade has transformed the world into a true global village. What initially started as a simple hype through MySpace has now become an internet sensation and so popular that it has become not a luxury but a commodity for most people. Every individual with the access of internet anywhere around the globe can be connected to everyone around the world. It only takes minutes for news or an event to get viral on the social media. And once it does, the whole world becomes aware of it. Because of the intense power of social media, everything in today’s world needs to be shaped outin accordance with the trends of it. Like all other fields, sports journalism has taken a completely new form after the dominance of social media. Social media has created hype amongst people who now find it very necessary to post everything online. This has forced journalists to adopt a completely different method in order to stay up to date and provide people with interesting news. Sports journalism is even harder to express over social media since the information related to sports such as scores and other updates can easily be published. The authenticity of sports news can also become a challenge due to the citizen journalism becoming a common phenomenon on social media.

Social Media and Its Impacts on Sports Journalism

The primary source of watching sport is still television for most of the people around the globe (Price, 2015). Sports for a long time have served as the family entertainment for many households and hence people want to watch sports matches on their television as a family event. It is a tradition and people tend to follow it still very widely around the world. Televisions are also one of the main sources for watching highlights and talk shows related to the performance of the matches as well. Moreover, most sports matches have contracts with the cable channels and even free air as well. These channels provide live action on televisions and all the hardcore fans of a sport tend to watch it immediately. But now a wider community of people is shifting towards online streaming of sport (Price, Farrington and Hall, 2013).

Times have changed drastically in the past decade and today no individual has any time for anything. Despite the fact that a large number of sports fans still exist out there who have to watch the match the life on television exactly when it is being aired. These fans are mostly orthodox and old fans of watching sport. But today, with the bombardment of smartphones, tablets and laptop everything has made everything become remote. People now prefer to watch their matches on the go. Even if they are supposedly busy during a day and do not have the time to sit down at a certain place, they can always open up their smartphone or tablet anywhere and watch the sports match by streaming online. They can at any time read the reviews available on websites or even on social media while doing something else as well. They can watch highlights, make comments, and share their own opinions regardingthe matches that have occurred (Cave and Miller, 2016).

In the old days, if there was a sports match and due to some reason a person had to miss it, they’d have to set up a whole system which would start the recording on the tape. Though this method was quite efficient, it still consumed a lot of time and took great effort. Now, no individual has to face such issues. Everything is available on the internet. A person just has to go online and there they find everything related to the match. Online there are highlights of the sports matches, the mistakes of the matches, and even the whole match. Everything is categorized and presented in a much neater sense which appeals to the fans much more. The ability to share their opinion with some of the experts through Tweets or Facebook posts is also what grasps the attention of many people who feel like they are a part of the whole team through these small gestures (Price, Farrington and Hall, 2013).

Online, a sports fan finds reviews about the game. There are many experts on a certain sport and they leave their reviews and comments on a certain match. A fan loves to read or listen to them while they watch the game or even just its highlights. There are even pages on social media where there are continuous discussions during the match as well which allows sports fan to connect with one another giving them an even better experience.

According to Price, Farrington and Hall(2013), through the presence of social media platforms, everything has improved drastically for thesports fan. There is more interaction between the fans of the same sports team. There are more reviews to read and write. Almost everyone can share their reviews and even become popular for their opinion on a certain event. There are many platforms on social media, such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and many others, using which all this can be accomplished by sports fans in an instant. All these social media platforms are very interesting and provide a good basis for connecting with the world of sports but unfortunately, they create a dilemma called the fragmentation of audiences.

Fragmentation of audience occurs when the audience is unaware of where to put their attention. There are so many places from where the same kind of information can be received that it eventually divides up the audience into different small groups. Though this might not seem like a big problem but when a certain journalist might want to start using social media to promote their sports news they need to be aware of which platform to use that will pitch in the most views and appreciation from the audience. Handling all these different platforms at once can also become a hefty task which may lead to further complications for the author. Another issue with thefragmentation of audience is that there is so much information being posted about every event on social media that it becomes tough to distinguish the unauthentic one from another. In order to establish a reputation as a journalist and capturing the attention of the audience also proves to be very difficult due to the audience fragmentation (Ienco, 2016).

This dilemma has also created a frenzy of issues for advertisers as well. Previously during the season of matches, only a few platforms were available such as the television and a few online websites which would stream the matches. This helped the advertisers to select any channel or website and post their advertisements through them. This allowed them to completely earn back their investment of advertisement as they targeted a mass of audience. But since all the audience is so scattered in the world today due to social media, the advertisers have a hard time finding the right kind of strategy so that a mass of audience could be targeted (Ienco, 2016).Sports Journalism

People around the world have many sources to find the desired sports information that they are looking for. A person can switch on the radio or the television, read posts on social media or through web articles or even read it on newspapers (despite the fact that they have become less popular).The audience is fragmented into too many platforms. It is important for any company or a journalist that in order to be successful they utilize every source to reach their audience. Only then can the audience be targeted as a mass. But it is not as simple as it seems. A newspaper requires a complete article to make sense to a reader but the same article cannot be read out loud on television or even be posted on a social media website or application. Everything has to be tailored according to its respective requirements.This has proven to be a bit more challenging for those who are associated with sports media today (Clapp, 2015).

Being a broadcaster of sports has always looked very much fun. And even though it is fun, it isn’t very easy. Anchorpersons have to be actual real fans of the sports in order to grasp the attention of their audience. A sports trivia can be created by broadcasters which can only be done if they know the game well enough. It is very hard to come up with comments on the go but once a broadcaster grasps the attention of the audience through this, they become very popular. Sports commentary is something that grasps audience very easily (if done well and correctly) and allows the commentators to gain popularity very easily. Becoming a sports sensation has many bonuses attached to it as well such as fame and quotation of remarks throughout the games. This is one of the reasons why broadcasters love becoming the anchorman for various sports but in order to be successful, any commentator has to have an affiliation with the sport (Schultz and Sheffer, 2010)………………………….continued