Female Athletes: The Influence Of Social Media

Have you ever noticed while you’re watching television, the amount of times you or your friends go on your phones to check social media? A google studied showed that in the latter half of 2012, “77% of people watched television while using another electronic device” (Gomez Aguilar, Paniagua Rojano, & Farias Batlle, 2015, p.541). This number has most definitely increased over the past four years. The advancements in technology, increase popularity of social media, and how easily it can be accessed, due to smartphones, has made it more common for people to go on social media while their watching TV. With Twitter being the most important social media platform for sports communication, it allows fans to post while watching a game or listening to

Female athletes, specifically, need the following to show they have the support and to gain more exposure. Again, consider where Alex Morgan is at now those followers propelled her into the spotlight. In today’s society all people care about is how many followers they have. This is due to the fact that followers are more opportunities for voices to be heard and to have more attention focused on. They have become a form of measurement of popularity in the world today. With social media, female athletes were able to gain more followers than they have had before because people got to see them for who they really are. “In today's world athletes may communicate directly with their fans through online social media. This gives female athletes the possibility to present themselves in a new light” (Coche, 2014, p.95). Especially, in this time, where fitness and lifting have become more popular, it gives female athletes more opportunities to gain a wider following and shows the sports industry they get support and attention like male athletes too. If they can prove their fan base on social media, then it can increase the media’s coverage on their sports and allow the gap between men’s and women’s sports coverage to