Much Ado About Twitter, Twitch, and More: A Maturing Research Agenda

Abstract

In hindsight, one might argue that when Communication & Sport published its inaugural issue in 2013, social media received insufficient attention by essay authors – leading names in the field – in their assessment of the phenomena to which scholars should be attentive in the coming decade. Social media was not entirely absent, of course. For instance, Walter Gantz, in his overview and reflection on the state of the field relating to sports fanship, framed social media and other interactive technologies as increasingly playing a facilitating role for “expression, competition, attention, fun and connectivity” (2013, p. 183). Raymond Boyle, in his assessment of journalism and digital culture, wrote, “Taking the long view of communications culture, social media can be seen as part of an evolving tradition within sports journalism, that offers aspects of change, but also continuity” (2013, p. 94). But he added this, “once the genie of social media is ‘out of the bottle,’ it is out for good” (p. 94). Out of the bottle, indeed. Just a year later, Editor-in-Chief Lawrence A. Wenner convened a handful of scholars to address opportunities and challenges in what he described as a “striking rise” (2014, p. 103) in the number of submissions focused on Twitter and sport. In his editorial essay titled “Much Ado (or Not) About Twitter? Assessing an Emergent Communication and Sport Research Agenda,” Wenner expressed concerns (shared by others, including the two current editors of this journal) that social-media-focused research risked being too enamored with the platform (e.g., Twitter) while being inattentive to wider cultural phenomena and the need for such studies to address important theoretical questions central to communication and sport.