An Examination of the Public’s Twitter Usage of Youth Olympic Games and Olympic Games from 2010 to 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the status of Twitter usage on attracting the public’s attention with regard to the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) as compared to the Olympic Games (OG). Associated tweets were collected and analyzed to determine whether retweets, likes, and hashtags of tweets differed by event (YOG or OG), by event year (2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016), or by timeframe (before, during, and after the major sporting events). Using the Python programming language, this study extracted data (i.e., tweets, retweets, likes, and hashtags) during the three timeframes across the eight mega-sporting events. Findings from this study have implications for the analytical development of social media usage by sport organizations and provide a better understanding of social media platforms in the context of mega-sporting events.

考察公众对2010年至2016年青奥会和奥运会的推特使用情况

本研究的目的是评估Twitter在吸引公众关注方面的使用状况, 例如青少年奥林匹克运动会(YOG)与奥运会(OG)。收集并分析相关推文, 以确定推文的转发、赞和标签是否因事件(YOG或OG)、事件年(2010年、2012年、2014年和2016年)或时间框架(重大体育赛事之前、期间和之后)而异。使用Python编程语言, 本研究提取了数据(即在8个大型体育赛事的3个时间段内, 包括推特、转发、点赞和标签)。这项研究的结果对体育组织对社交媒体使用的分析发展具有启示意义, 并在大型体育赛事的背景下更好地理解社交媒体平台。

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• Twitter
• Youth Olympic Games
• Olympic Games
• Python

关键词:

• 社交媒体
• 推特
• 青年奥运会
• 奥运会
• Python

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Juha Yoon (Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington, U.S.) is lecturer in the sport management program in the School of Public Health at Indiana University-Bloomington (IU). She has scholarly interests within the field of sport management, including such areas as sport communication and social networks in sport. Her research line is focused on quantitative and qualitative analyses of media utilization as a marketing strategy and online social networks within mega sport events.

Paul M. Pedersen (Ph.D., Florida State University, U.S.) is a Professor and Director of Sport Management at Indiana University-Bloomington. Dr. Pedersen is the founding editor of the International Journal of Sport Communication (IJSC) and an editorial board member of 10 other academic journals. Based on his previous work as a sportswriter and sports business columnist he has primary scholarly interests in the area of sport communication within the field of sport management. Dr. Pedersen has published eight books and 96 articles in peer-reviewed academic outlets.