“Behind
every kick of the ball there has to be a thought.” A quote from the great
Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp, this then relates to the World Cup and social
media in that there has to be thought process behind everything that you do and
say and Luis Suarez did not do so as he did not think before biting Italy’s
Giorgio Chiellini.
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” 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".[2]
“Germany’s
defeat of Argentina was the World Cup’s biggest moment, generating more
than 618,000 tweets per minute”[3].
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 such as who
was the best player of the tournament and so on, as well as being entertained
as the world cup could have given us the audiences enjoyment as well as a
freedom of escapism in where we forget about our everyday lives. With
618,000 tweets per minute this is close to a million tweets per minute, this is
a vast improvement from the last world cup where “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.” [4]This
shows us a lot as the match which was most tweeted about was not even one of
the biggest games of the world cup as well as only 3,283 tweets being made per
minute compared to 618,000 in the 2014 World Cup. This stat alone 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.” [5]
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.
This then links in with hyper reality in that as
fans of Luis Suarez they would look up to him as he is one of the biggest
footballers in the world and as a result of him biting Chiellini they may feel
it is acceptable to copy Suarez and this would give Suarez an even more of a
negative image as he is seen as a role model and yet is doing stupid things
right in front of the media’s eye. Also the theory of Propp 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 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. You have brands such
as Adidas who were the main sponsors of the World Cup who used the 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” [6]
This quote 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, this shows us how digital media is now
gaining more audiences than any of the other platforms and how it is becoming
ever so important. This is then proven as “The number of Adidas tweets has
been increasing, averaging 12.2 million per day in the week” [7]
Showing us that Adidas are concentrating more on the social media side of
things as they are getting much more interactions than before with them being
mentioned or retweeted on Twitter at a much more rapid rate than before.
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.” [8] This
shows that Adidas have covered different aspects of Media in that they have a
picture ready as well as a video from vine which is a forever expanding app
gaining more and more users as well as having back up options. Showing no
matter what happens Adidas would have all corners covered ready for when
Germany finish playing. However this idea of Adidas of concentrating mainly on
social networking was done first by the Olympics in 2012:[9]“
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 had begun in the Olympics in 2012.
You
could then link this into Marxism and pluralism in that you could look at the
role of Marxists linking in with Adidas in that they want to maintain their
control they have over the mass media and are resulting in doing so by creating
new ideas such as concentrating more on the social media side of things and
thus they have the control as they are a wealthy corporation and would try to
give the audiences of social networking for e.g. an illusion of control where
they think they have the power but in reality its Adidas who have all the
power. The theory of Gillian Dyer could also be used in ‘Lines of appeal’ as
Adidas may appeal to different audiences due to the different types of people
such as “successful people” and the “elite”, this would be the different big
name footballers they would have promoting their brand in which audiences would
want to be just like.This also links to the idea of sport now becoming a
business; this is then further justified by authors Raymond Boyle and Richard
Haynes who 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”[10].
This point is then further proven by authors Eileen Kennedy and Laura Hills who
said “Sport is enmeshed in the networks of global capitalism” [11]
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. By this I mean in that Adidas had to change their
campaign in this world cup to concentrate more on the social media side of
things as audiences wants and needs on the internet and as a result 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 incident in which I have already
spoke about between Suarez and Chiellini. Once this incident had happened and
there was a social media outburst of this incident, there were many “memes”[12]
taking place on Twitter in which many accounts on Twitters followers had
increased due to their memes getting many retweets and favourites. You then
also had accounts such as Nandoes who made jokes out of the Suarez situation
saying “Hey Suarez, if you’re that hungry, why not get yourself into something
really tasty” [13] with a
picture of a Nandoes meal, this obviously gained lots of retweets and
favourites and as a result Nandoes 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. You could say it had
taken social media to a new dimension: “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.” [14]
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.” [15]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 my 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”[16].
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” [17] stated one of the
producers within the company. This then links in with the idea of a global
village 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” [18] 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” [19]
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, such as from black and white televisions
to coloured, also more recently the impact of social media and its role in the
world cup.
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”[20].
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, so if we
want to know the score of any matches we can just check the internet. 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 I believe 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”[21]
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”[22],
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. There were many reasons to why this past world cup was called the
first ever social media World Cup in which I have stated above, 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” [23]
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 for e.g. you can speak to your family members who are in
different countries and it highlights the point in that people are now
dependant on technology such as their phones in such a way they cannot live
without it.
Word count: 2941
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[1] Farrington, N (2015)
[2] What is Twitter? (2015)
[3] Sweney, M. (2014)
[4] Twitter Sets New Record (2010)
[5] Hepworth, T. (2014)
[6] Social media winner of
world cup (2014)
[7] Ruvolo, J. (2014)
[8] Ibid
[9] Billings, A
[10] Boyle,
R., & Haynes, R. (2009).
[11] Kennedy, E., & Hills,
L. (2009).
[12] Urban dictionary (2014)
[13]Hooten,
C (2014)
[14] Li, X. (2014)
[15] Ibid
[16] Engineer, C. (2014)
[17] Murphy, D (2014)
[18] The future of work
(2014)
[19] Alone together (2010)
[20] ITV football (2014)
[21] R, Brookes
(2002)
[22] D, Rowe (2004)
[23] Kerr, D (2014)
[1] Farrington,
N (2015) Page 17
[2] What is
Twitter? (2015)
[3] Sweney, M. (2014)
[4] Twitter
Sets New Record (2010)
[5] Hepworth,
T. (2014)
[7] Ruvolo,
J. (2014)
[8]
Ibid
[9] Billings,
A Page 34
[10] Boyle, R., & Haynes, R. Page 23
[11] Kennedy, E., & Hills, L. Page 6
[12]
Urban dictionary (2014)
[13] Hooten,
C (2014)
[14] Li, X.
(2014)
[15] Ibid
[17] Murphy,
D (2014)
[19] Alone
together (2010)
[20] ITV
football (2014)
[21]
R, Brookes (2002) page 45
[22]
D, Rowe (2004) page 23
