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Abstract
The growth of social media has provided sports fans with unprecedented access to information about celebrity athletes’ personal and professional lives and the means to communicate to them. To date, fan-athlete interactions on social media have often been viewed as positive, with cited benefits of heightened interpersonal relationships and team support. Potential negative consequences of interactions on social media, especially when professional athletes’ personal and professional norm violations are exposed, are not well-understood. Based upon the notion that public shaming practices are often used for the purposes of ensuring that individuals adhere to expected behavioural norms, this study sought to explore the presence and nature of public shaming of professional athletes through social media in response to athletes’ norm violations. A qualitative content analysis of 7700 fans’ comments on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram directed at eleven male and female professional athletes from six different sports and the organisations that employed them were collected. Findings demonstrated fans engage in public shaming of athletes following norm violations, as illustrated through fans’ offers or withdrawals of support, and descriptions of desired physical, psychosocial and career-related consequences for the athletes. Findings are interpreted in light of Braithwaite’s Theory and the influences within and outside of the professional sport environment contributing to public shaming practices are discussed.
Notes
1 Since Kaepernick’s protest, for which he was heavily criticized, there has been a growing movement internationally amongst sport teams of all levels to protest the treatment of minorities.