“It's 'nonsense' for Arsenal footballers to take celebratory
selfies after a Premier League victory.” Jamie Carragher on how social media
has affected the footballing world.
How did the 2014 World Cup
demonstrate that social media is more significant with audiences than ever?
Within this investigation the 2014 World Cup is
going to be spoken about, there were many examples that showed that social
media is now more significant to audiences than ever before. But what is social
media? “Social media are tools to increase our ability and to take collective
action...”[1]This
was proven during the World Cup 2014 in where many records were broken and many
new ideas on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat
etc were made. You had different accounts being made just for the World Cup as
well as new ideas being made on Snapchat for e.g. All of this together shows we
are now in a “global village”[2]
due to the vast amount of technology now at our disposal to communicate with
anyone across the whole world to make a global village technologically.
There were many records broken on social media
especially on the social networking site that is always expanding: Twitter,
“Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and
read short 140-character messages called "tweets".[3]
“Germany’s
defeat of Argentina was the World Cup’s biggest moment, generating more
than 618,000 tweets per minute”[4].
This shows us that the final of the World Cup was the most tweeted about
subject in the history of Twitter, this may be to do with the world wide
audience the World Cup and Twitter have combined and also how people do not
want to miss out being a part of their very own World Cup within social media.
This then links in with the theory of Blumler and Katz in uses and
gratifications. In that the World Cup sparked social interaction between
audiences and thus allowing debates to be made on social networking, as well as
being entertained due to the World Cup giving audiences enjoyment as well as escapism
from everyday lives. This can then be linked in with the audience demographics
and psychographics from social media and the World Cup in that it was mainly aspirers
and explorers who were seen to be young and innovative, this is proven with the
next quote: “81% of teens use social media sites”[5] “That record was shattered yesterday as Twitter users
published 3,283 tweets per second at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark
in the World Cup.”[6] This
stat alone from the 2010 world cup shows how Twitter has vastly expanded over
four years.
Another way in which Twitter showed how it has
become more significant with users is when a major incident happened within the
World Cup where Luis Suarez bit Giorgio Chiellini: “When Luis Suarez
took a piece out of Giorgio Chiellini, Twitter traffic confirmed what had
occurred before the commentary did.” [7]
This highlights how the role of social media plays an important role in
different areas, as for e.g. if something like this had happened twenty or so
years ago this incident would have been found out after the match maybe, but
due to social media and the many users it has the social media audiences
noticed what Suarez had done and thus it allowed for the commentators of this
match to realise what had happened and then present this incident to the rest
of the world.
Also the “character theory”[8]
could be used in this situation as Suarez would be seen as the villain who is
seen as doing wrong and Chiellini is both the princess who needs saving and
gets saved by the media as they notice what Suarez as done and also the hero as
he forgives Suarez and is seen as doing right in the public eye. However you
can then argue that Suarez was seen as a villain due to social media making out
he is a bad and negative guy, this can then be related to the “two step flow
theory”[9] in
that opinion leaders and in this case it would be verified accounts on social
media such as BBC Sport making out Suarez is massively in the wrong and the
rest of the social media users believing what the BBC are saying is right and
therefore this is automatically the correct opinion.
Moving on to how brands benefited from the expansion of social media
linking in with the world cup. Brands such as Adidas who were the main sponsors
of the World Cup used social media to their advantage. “Adidas has
launched its biggest ever campaign to support its sponsorship of the World Cup
and tellingly has opted to spend more on digital marketing than TV ads” [10]
This highlights the now importance social media and digital marketing on the
world as the leading sponsor of the World Cup focused more on the digital media
side than the broadcasting side, showing us how digital media is now gaining
more audiences than any other platform. This is further proven as “The number
of Adidas tweets has been increasing, averaging 12.2 million per day in the
week” [11]
Adidas are now getting much more interactions than before with them being
mentioned or retweeted on Twitter at an increased rate. Another way in which
Adidas is shown in concentrating on the social media side of things is: “With
five minutes to go in the match, Adidas' Mr. Hughes tells the team three pieces
of content are ready to go if Germany wins: a Hummel’s photo, a Vine video of
his goal and a group shot in case another German player also scores.” [12] Showing
that Adidas have covered different aspects of media from having a picture and a
video from vine, meaning no matter what happens Adidas would have all corners
covered once Germany finish playing. This idea of concentrating mainly on
social media was done first by the Olympics in 2012:[13]“Olympics
partnered with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Shazam to promote its coverage of
the games onto these popular social media platforms” showing that the so called
“digital revolution”[14]
had begun in the Olympics in 2012.
Linking to the role
of Marxists in that Adidas would want to maintain their control they have over
the mass media and are doing so by creating new ideas such as concentrating
more on the social media side of things. Thus they have the control as they are
a wealthy corporation and would try to give the audiences of social media an
illusion of control where they think they have the power but in reality it’s
Adidas who have the power. The theory “Lines of appeal”[15] could
be used as Adidas may appeal to different audiences due to the different types
of athletes they sponsor such as “successful people” and the “elite”. This also
links to the idea of sport now becoming a business: authors Raymond Boyle and
Richard Haynes said “It also demonstrates that the extent that
sport, more than any other time in history, has been explicitly, pulled into
the orbit of commerce and business”[16].
This point is then further proven by authors Eileen Kennedy and Laura Hills who
said “Sport is enmeshed in the networks of global capitalism” [17]
However on the other hand looking at it from a pluralist view in that
Adidas the media organisation in this case are responsive to the wants of the
audiences. Adidas had to change their campaign in this World Cup to concentrate
more on the social media aspects as audiences wants and needs were social media
based, therefore Adidas had to change so that they could benefit the mass
audiences.
Another way in which brands utilised the use of social media during the World
Cup was the Suarez and Chiellini incident. Once this incident had happened there
was a social media outburst, there were many memes taking place on Twitter in
which many accounts on Twitter had their followers increased due to their memes
getting many retweets. You then also had accounts such as Nando’s who made
jokes out of the Suarez situation saying “Hey Suarez, if you’re that hungry,
why not get yourself into something really tasty” [18]
with a picture of a Nando’s meal, this obviously gained lots of retweets and as
a result Nando’s created brand awareness of themselves as well as gaining more
followers than they had before due to them capitalising on what Suarez had
done.
There were many ways in which social media had developed from the last world
cup to the 2014 world cup: “In the World
Cup timeline, you can view Tweets related to the World Cup from people
in your network, along with relevant Tweets from teams, players, coaches,
press, fans in the stadiums and celebrities.” [19]
By making a Twitter timeline just for the world cup it shows the importance of
this event and allows you to keep in first hand touch with your country and how
they are doing as well as being easily accessible. There were also other things
added on to Twitter just for the world cup “Use a hashtag in front of the
relevant three-letter country code and that country’s flag will appear after
the text.” [20]This idea was only
implemented for the world cup and allowed fans to show their support for their
country by hashtaging and therefore getting their country to trend it was sort
of like a competition within a competition but this was between the world wide
audiences within Twitter.
On Snapchat another social media app they tried out a new idea for the
first time in their history. This was called Rio Live and on everyone’s
Snapchat across the whole world on their story everyone could see other
people’s snaps that were near on the stadium of the final of the world cup.
This was the first time it was ever used on Snapchat and since then it is
regularly used on the app with other events across the world. However at first
the Rio Live received a lot of criticism with many people over the world
showing their hate towards the idea that Snapchat have introduced with one
person saying “That rio live thing on snapchat
is gonna make me mad. I don't even like soccer”[21].
However as I have already explained Snapchat still
decided to continue on with this idea as they saw it as expanding and building
new communities “ We wanted to build
something that offered a community perspective” [22]
stated one of the producers within the company. This then links in with the
idea of a “global village”[23]
in that we the people of the world are considered as one single community
linked by the internet and now more importantly social networking. “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole
earth will be converted into a huge brain” [24]
stated Nicolas Tesla. By this he could mean that we are all one brain and that
we are as a worldwide community are getting controlled by the internet and we
are not taking any notice of this situation and just prefer to continue to let
the internet control us. This also links to Sherry Turkle who in her book
stated that we are “Alone together” [25]
meaning that all of us are alone but together in a way as we are together on
apps such as Twitter but in reality we are alone by ourselves, it sort of like
an illusion in that we think we are together but we are not really.
A prime example to us as
audiences of many eras in the technological world would be the World Cup. The
World Cup happens every four years and within this four year time gap
technology would also change.
The 1966 world cup which
was won by England was one of the biggest in television as it was broadcasted
all over the world and for the first time in England was shown on two channels
BBC and ITV. However coloured television was introduced a year later after the World
Cup “England's victory over West Germany in the final
was watched by 38 million people in the UK”[26].
This was obviously a change from the 1962 world cup where there weren’t any
televisions available to watch the football then and you had to listen on
radios. This is an obvious change to broadcasting now
where the media platform of print is not as important as it would have been in
1966 as we now have the internet to access first hand news on the go. Also with
broadcasting and televisions there are now 3D televisions as well as large
televisions such as 60 inch televisions compared to before, showing the vast
improvement from 40 plus years ago, and to the most recent world cup in how
social media took control of the world cup and how this past world cup was
called the first ever social media world cup.
So overall this past world cup that took place
showed that social media is becoming ever so important in the everyday lives of
us the people of the world and the many different audiences. “the idea that new
technologies such as the internet will replace old technologies”[27]
stated author Brooks, R, whose statement is being proved right in today’s day
and age as the internet is taking over you have many examples such as the
decline of newspapers being linked to the internet for one. However another
author Rowe, D went on to state that “it is important to stress that each new
mode of communication did not develop in isolation from the other”[28],
this links in with social media and broadcast for e.g. where they do not
isolate from one another for e.g. in some football matches such as on sky
sports you can tweet your opinion on your favourite player by doing a hashtag
poll linked in with Twitter after or while the match is going on, so the two
are combining. In this past World Cup on social media many records were broken:
“there were 672 million tweets relating to the 2014 World Cup, according to
Twitter, with more than 350 million people on Facebook posted more than 3
billion interactions” [29]
making the World Cup the biggest social media event in both of these social
networking sites history. This then links in with globalisation and the digital
revolution in that new technologies mean that we socialise differently, this
means with the use of social media you can interact with celebrities as well as
catch up on the news. Moving on to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and corruption
yet again highlights how big the World Cup is and how it can affect the whole
world as Qatar were seen as paying off different world associations to vote for
Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup: “several
improper payments” to high ranking African football officials and paid $1.2m”[30]
Word count: 2560
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[1] Farrington, N (2015)
[2] McLuhan, M
(1964)
[3] What is Twitter?
(2015)
[4] Sweney, M. (2014)
[5] Sterling, G (2013)
[6] Twitter Sets New
Record (2010)
[7] Hepworth, T. (2014)
[8] Propp, V
(1968)
[9] Lazarsfeld
& Katz, E (1955)
[10] Social media winner
of world cup (2014)
[11] Ruvolo, J. (2014)
[12] Ibid
[13] Billings, A
[14] Isaacson, W
(2014)
[15] Dyer, G
(1988)
[16] Boyle, R., & Haynes, R. (2009).
[17] Kennedy, E., & Hills,
L. (2009).
[18]Hooten,
C (2014)
[19] Li, X. (2014)
[20] Ibid
[21] Engineer, C. (2014)
[22] McLuhan, M
(1964)
[23] Murphy, D (2014)
[24] The future of work
(2014)
[25] Alone together (2010)
[26] ITV football (2014)
[27] R, Brookes
(2002)
[28] D, Rowe (2004)
[29] Kerr, D (2014)
[30]O, Gibson (2014)
[1] Farrington,
N (2015) Page 17
[2]
McLuhan, M (1964)
[3] What is
Twitter? (2015)
[4] Sweney,
M. (2014)
[5]
Sterling, G (2013)
[6] Twitter
Sets New Record (2010)
[7] Hepworth,
T. (2014)
[8]
Propp, V (1968)
[9] Lazarsfeld & Katz, E (1955)
[11] Ruvolo,
J. (2014)
[12]
Ibid
[13] Billings,
A Page 34
[14] Isaacson, W (2014)
[15] Dyer, G
(1988)
[16] Boyle, R., & Haynes, R. Page 23
[17] Kennedy, E., & Hills, L. Page 6
[18] Hooten,
C (2014)
[19] Li, X.
(2014)
[20] Ibid
[22] Murphy,
D (2014)
[23]
McLuhan, M (1964)
[25] Alone
together (2010)
[26] ITV
football (2014)
[27]
R, Brookes (2002) page 45
[28]
D, Rowe (2004) page 23
[30]
Gibson, O (2014)
