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This was an extension of research by the same authors (2010) that investigated sports reporters’ perception of their use of Twitter as part of their professional journalistic duties. Using content-analysis methodology (N = 1,008), the authors investigated how sports reporters actually used Twitter. Analysis showed a discrepancy between journalist responses and measured content. Although journalists said they were using Twitter for breaking news and promotion, the dominant result of the content analysis was commentary and opinion. There were also differences related to print and smaller media outlets. The implications of such differences are discussed, including a possible paradigmatic shift in journalists’ approaches.

Studies examining factors that influence credibility perceptions have demonstrated the importance of a source’s gender and attractiveness. However, scholars have only begun to extend these findings to credibility in the context of mediated sports. This experiment tested the relationship that gender and attractiveness have with credibility and whether this varies as a function of the gender of the athlete in a given story. Results indicate that reporters’ gender and attractiveness and athlete gender affect perceptions of credibility such that when reporters are of the opposite gender of an athlete, they are perceived as most credible when they are less attractive. Results also reveal a gender bias such that reporters are perceived as most credible when covering male athletes, regardless of reporter gender. Explanations are offered for these findings, in addition to a discussion of the implications for news practitioners.

The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, thrust potential Olympians into the midst of the unprecedented outbreak of the Zika virus. Because parasocial interaction theory purports that athletes can have tremendous influence on fans’ attitudes and behavior, particularly in the context of public health, it is important to understand how media framed athletes’ response to their risk of contracting Zika at the Games and the possibility of a global epidemic. To understand how athletes’ safety concerns were portrayed by news outlets, the authors conducted a framing analysis of articles reporting on the intersection of the Olympics and Zika published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post between January and November of 2016. This analysis revealed that media employed three main frames in their coverage of athletes: Athletes perceived the risk of Zika as small compared with potential Olympic glory, the decision to participate in the Games is an athletes’ personal choice between family and career, and athletes used Zika concerns as a convenient excuse to pull out of a troubled Games. The combination of these frames painted a contradictory portrait of athletes’ risk perception, both emphasizing and downplaying the threat of contracting the virus at the Games and an ensuing worldwide outbreak. These conflicting athlete narratives could have created uncertainty regarding the actual safety risk of the Zika virus and the Olympic Games for the fans who admire the athletes.

This research studied the influence of multiple social identities on the emotions that athletes felt toward their teammates/partners and opponents. Athletes (N = 714) from individual and team-based sports reported their identification both as athletes of the sport and as athletes of their club before reporting their precompetitive emotions. The results showed that these multiple social identities influenced precompetitive emotions toward different targets, with higher levels of sport identification associated with increased positive and decreased negative emotions toward opponents and higher levels of club identification associated with increased positive and decreased negative emotions toward teammates/partners, although increased club identification was also associated with more positive emotions toward opponents. These findings extend intergroup emotions theory by showing its suitability and applicability to face-to-face task-oriented teams in sport. Particularly, they highlight the importance of investigating the simultaneous level of multiple social identities, rather than only a dichotomic self-categorization, on group-based emotions experienced toward multiple targets.

As female athletes participating in physique-salient sports report similar levels of social physique anxiety (SPA) and disordered eating symptoms compared with those in nonphysique salient sports, alternative factors contributing to disordered eating require consideration, specifically participation in sport type (team vs. individual). This study examined SPA and disordered eating correlates in female athletes (N= 137) in two sport types (team sports and individual sports). Individual sport athletes exhibited higher SPA, F(1, 135) = 22.03, p< .001; dieting, Brown and Forsythe’s F(1, 57.05) = 43.79, p< .001; and bulimic behavior, Brown and Forsythe’s F(1, 59.92) = 13.45, p= .001 than team sport athletes. SPA and sport type together predicted 44% of dieting and 22% of bulimic symptom variance, suggesting that individual-sport athletes with higher SPA experienced greater disordered eating. Involvement in individual sports where physique is more open to social evaluation may contribute to dieting and bulimic symptoms among female athletes.

This study examined the prevalence of and relationship between the disorders of the female athlete triad in collegiate athletes participating in aesthetic, endurance, or team/anaerobic sports. Participants were 425 female collegiate athletes from 7 universities across the United States. Disordered eating, menstrual dysfunction, and musculoskeletal injuries were assessed by a health/medical, dieting and menstrual history questionnaire, the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), and the Eating Disorder Inventory Body Dissatisfaction Subscale (EDI-BD). The percentage of athletes reporting a clinical diagnosis of anorexia and bulimia nervosa was 3.3% and 2.3%, respectively; mean (±SD) EAT and EDI-BD scores were 10.6 ± 9.6 and 9.8 ± 7.6, respectively. The percentage of athletes with scores indicating “at-risk” behavior for an eating disorder were 15.2% using the EAT-26 and 32.4% using the EDI-BD. A similar percentage of athletes in aesthetic, endurance, and team/anaerobic sports reported a clinical diagnosis of anorexia or bulimia. However, athletes in aesthetic sports scored higher on the EAT-26 (13.5 ± 10.9) than athletes in endurance (10.0 ± 9.3) or team/anaerobic sports (9.9 ± 9.0, p < .02); and more athletes in aesthetic versus endurance or team/anaerobic sports scored above the EAT-26 cut-off score of 20 (p < .01). Menstrual irregularity was reported by 31% of the athletes not using oral contraceptives, and there were no group differences in the prevalence of self-reported menstrual irregularity. Muscle and bone injuries sustained during the collegiate career were reported by 65.9% and 34.3% of athletes, respectively, and more athletes in aesthetic versus endurance and team/anaerobic sports reported muscle (p = .005) and/or bone injuries (p < .001). Athletes “at risk” for eating disorders more frequently reported menstrual irregularity (p = .004) and sustained more bone injuries (p = .003) during their collegiate career. These data indicate that while the prevalence of clinical eating disorders is low in female collegiate athletes, many are “at risk” for an eating disorder, which places them at increased risk for menstrual irregularity and bone injuries.