The impact of athlete activism online remains understudied in academic scholarship. To gain a better understanding for fan response to athlete activism online, this study examines the patterns in perception and response among sports fans with respect to politically-charged content posted online by professional athletes. The purpose of this study is to use this understanding of fan response to help athletes and their representatives manage fan reaction to athletes’ politically-charged content. By examining fan response to politically-charged content, this study suggests principles for eliciting positive impact, fostering open discourse, and promoting awareness through social media. Patterns in perception and response among sports fans with respect to politically-charged content posted online by professional athletes were examined through in-depth interviews conducted with sports fans between the ages of 18 and 30 who follow the profiles of professional athletes on social media. An understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of athletes’ use of social media for social movements has been gained through an analysis of the emergent themes among perception and response patterns revealed by study participants. The emergent themes of this study inform recommendations for professional athletes posting politically-charged content online. The findings of this study suggest that athletes who post politically-charged content online should do so with their goals and audience in mind. Knowing their goals as well as their audience grants athletes the ability to frame their content accordingly, rendering them more likely to receive positive responses to the politically-charged content they post. Based on the findings of this study, athletes who frame politically-charged content as a narrative highlighting their lived experience and employing appeals to emotion and humor yield the most positive responses from otherwise uninterested or hostile fans. The insights gained from this study stand to fill the gap in existing literature surrounding athlete activism online.

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.

Sports presents one of the most popular forms of entertainment in society, and sports media continues to expand its billion-dollar influence through new television deal and broadcasting rights. But with a population of journalists who are overwhelmingly white, straight, and male, sports media is promoting the hegemony of said image by reproducing stereotypes in its broadcasts to audiences around the country. Mainstream media regurgitates these stereotypes in their coverage of minority athlete by portraying black players as unintelligent or “thug”-ish, women as “butch”, and gay athletes as effeminate. These representations allow for the perpetuation of the white, heterosexual male narrative throughout society while sidelining those who do not fit the description. But just as sports media is growing in popularity, so too is the athlete activist. Starting in 2013, today’s athletic superstars are now using their exalted platforms to address societal issues and speak on behalf of marginalized groups that are often ignored or misrepresented by traditional media narratives. The efforts of Colin Kaepernick, Billie Jean King, and Jason Collins in fighting against the system and these stereotypes will reveal how certain athletes are represented in the media and their unique position of changing the discussion and inspiring others to challenge societal norms. The growing popularity of social media and its use as a tool for social activism will also be examined, particularly as it has revolutionized the culture of athlete activism.

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.

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