The purpose of the presented research is to evaluate the presence of the protest paradigm on a non-violent protest during a sport event, using the national anthem and the national flag as its strategy. The study will examine the protest performed by Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in 1996, Carlos Delgado in 2004 and Colin Kaepernick in 2016. The empirical data is collected from three major newspapers reporting about the protest and a content analysis is performed to evaluate the presence of negative framing. Drawing from previous research an analytical framework is constructed and used to evaluate the material, presenting a number of negative frames present. The study finds that the protest paradigm is present in all three cases, however with some variations. The articles often discuss the strategy of the protest over the claim being made. Characteristics like the individual’s salary or performance, the public opinion of outsiders or the response from the authorities are highlighted. The analysis state that the use of a national symbol is problematic for an activist as this tends to become the main story in articles rather than the claim of the protest.

This paper examines the way journalists have covered national anthem protests since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in late 2016. It analyzes the language used to discuss the protest in order to discover how the media obscured Kaepernick’s initial intent. It then assesses the language used in discussion of subsequent protests in professional sports, concluding that writers learned how to better frame their subjects from the public’s reception to and understanding of Kaepernick. In the early days of his demonstration, stories often lacked crucial information: whether it was general context, or the approval of Green Beret Nate Boyer. The paper circles back to Kaepernick, discussing his Nike ad campaign, its media coverage, and how capitalizing on his fame obfuscated his movement forever. From this, we learn the importance of active reading and paying attention to the biases or misinformation in media coverage.

This study addresses the media depiction of professional athletes involvement in protest and its impact for public consumption. This paper will further seek to analyze the role of social media and its framing of political protest specifically within professional sports. The purpose of this research is to study the progression in professional athletes’ participation in protest and through textual analysis aim to understand how newspapers frame an athlete’s message. The more recent study that will be used as a frame of reference is the newspaper coverage on the Kaepernick protest and the dual relationship that the local/national media and social media had in its framing and impact on sports and society. There is existing work that has focused on the up’s and down’s for African Americans in sports, but those sources only highlight small political protest in professional sports without highlighting newspaper coverage. This study will display through three top nationally circulated newspaper companies (and the top circulated newspaper in San Francisco where the Kaepernick protest started) how the media illustrates protest and the reaction to protest through the lens of social media.

The increasingly entangled correlation between media, sport and activism in the United States has generated an upsurge in new media research that focuses on athletes’ political social media posts from an ‘outsider’s’ perspective. To clearer comprehend the complex relationship of media, sport and activism from an ‘insider’s’ perspective, this thesis aims to converse with collegiate athletes in the United States about how they experience their personalized politics on social media, as well as it observes the collegiate athletes’ activist practices on particularly Twitter and Facebook. As an auxiliary ‘prop’, I utilize former NFL (National Football League) player Colin Kaepernick’s approach to athlete activism to start the discussions about the topic with the collegiate athletes. Kaepernick’s kneel during the national anthem in 2016, prior to a football game displayed on national television, gained a variety of negative responses, but also sparked a difference in conversations about the politization of sport, and ultimately lead to a swift re-appearance of athlete activism on social media (Serazio and Thorson, 2020). Thus, by collecting interview data and observations of the media practices of collegiate athletes, the analysis draws on bottom-up framing and practice theory to better understand how such sportspersons experience the intersection between sports and politics on social media, the implications of athlete activism, and the media practices involved in such performance. Ultimately, the results of this study suggest that appearances of tensions, anxieties and pressures subsist in collegiate athletes’ activism practices on social media, making it an auspicious site for further research seeking to investigate the intersection of media, sport, and activism.

This paper aims to analyze NFL's stance and approach towards racial issues since Colin Kaepernick's protest in 2016. Colin Kaepernick is an African American athlete who started to protest against racial and social injustice by kneeling before NFL games when the national anthem was played. His protests caused many controversies because many people saw his actions as disrespectful towards the military, flag, national anthem and towards the USA. NFL's stance is analyzed through a qualitative content analysis of all NFL statements, which were issued since the beginning of Kaepernick's protest until the end of 2020. The statements are analyzed by use of the critical race theory, which focuses on the topic of race, white supremacy and institutionalized and hidden racism. The results of the analysis are that NFL's stance towards racial issues changed substantially. In 2016 and 2017, the primary concern of the NFL was the form of Kaepernick's protest as it was understood as a disrespectful and un-American act. In these years, NFL was trying to have a discussion with players about the causes of the protests, however, its primary concern was the form of Kaepernick's protest. In 2018, NFL briefly introduced a set of rules, which prohibited players from taking a knee during the national anthem while being on...

In 2018 Nike collaborated with controversial NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on their 30th anniversary of their "Just Do It" campaign. Released on multiple platforms, the "Dream Crazy" campaign as it was labeled featured Kaepernick as well as other prominent athletes that broke all odds to become some of the biggest athletes in their sport. A prominent figure in the fight against racial injustice, Kaepernick triggered outrage when he started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem of the United States of America. Drawing from theories of Corporate Social Responsibility and Cause-Related Marketing, this thesis analyses media coverage of the "Dream Crazy" marketing campaign to understand why Nike would collaborate with Kaepernick. Employing qualitative thematic analysis, this thesis examined newspaper articles published around the release of the campaign. Research findings show that Nike received positive coverage as well as over forty-three million dollars in free media exposure. While some individuals burned their apparel in protest, Nike saw sales increase as consumers sought to demonstrate their support for Kaepernick and racial justice. Simultaneously, the campaign made the fight for racial justice a front-page topic as well as exposing Kaepernick's own struggle with being blackballed by the NFL for his public protests.

This study examines two marketing campaigns on the social media platform Twitter by the brand Nike, with the campaigns involving American football player Colin Kaepernick and tennis player Serena Williams respectively. The study specifically explores how Nike utilizes socially and politically progressive values in these marketing   campaigns and how users then respond to it on Twitter, with the source material consisting of four Twitter-posts, two by Nike and one each by the two athletes involved, as well as the replies by other Twitter-users to those posts. The replies to these four Twitter-posts were then sorted into reply types for each post, in other words categorized according to the sentiments and attitudes in the replies that were most prominently and frequently expressed. A grounded theory approach was used thereafter in order to apply relevant theoretical perspectives to the reply types and original posts, through which the source material was split into several analytical themes. The theoretical perspectives used in the analysis were Rosalind Gill’s postfeminist sensibility, Ron Von Burg and Paul E. Johnson’s writings on nostalgia as a critical perspective, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s floating signifier concept, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva¨s racial grammar theory, Susan Cahn’s writings on female athlete stereotypes, and Lauren Copeland’s writings on postmaterialism. The analysis showed that Nike utilized socially progressive causes such as racial and gender equality in an individualistic way by conveying them through the identities of Williams and Kaepernick in their Twitter-posts. It also showed that the replies to the marketing in turn also focused on the identities of the athletes, with repliers either declaring their approval or disapproval of Nike and their marketing campaigns based on whether they were ethically and ideologically aligned with the progressive causes and values that the athletes were proxies for in their respective marketing campaigns. Ultimately, this study revealed an individualization of political expression on social media, both when a corporation like Nike uses it to improve their brand image and in how individuals engage with political and social issues.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, the former starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, unknowingly bartered his athletic aspirations by exercising his First Amendment Right to freedom of expression. Frustrated with what he and many others perceived as pervasive extrajudicial tactics of law enforcement and a seemingly incessant lack of accountability from the American legal system, Kaepernick silently protested by sitting during the playing of the National Anthem. Although, Kaepernick's actions begun as a singular, almost imperceptible act, he has ultimately redefined the significance of taking a knee, and etched his name in a long list of other malcontents in the struggle for racial equality in America. The purpose of this study is to explore in detail one of the most polarizing components of the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) and Black Social Protests in the United States. Analysis of social media content will argue the value of the Kaepernick "Anti Flag/Anthem" Protest, from a communication-cultural perspective. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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