Sports Channels in Telegram: Genres, Topics and Form of Publications

The article aims to study the sports segment of Telegram, determine the current topics and genres of publications about sports, and identify the most popular sports on this social network. To accomplish this, the author selects the Top-10 Telegram author and group blogs based on the number of subscribers in the «public sports channels» category according to TGStat service. The genre, format, thematic, and visual features of publications have been studied for six months, from April 2022 to September 2022. As a result, the general and particular patterns of their development are revealed. The author conducted the content analysis of 2275 publications from twenty Telegram channels. The article finds out that a quarter (25%) of the channels are universal sports blogs, while football and MMA are the most popular sports in specialized blogs. The most popular forms of posts are photos and text but 12% of publications have no visual component. Despite the disqualification of Russian athletes, the competition topic is the most popular one (37%), and there is no political agenda. In terms of genre, news prevails (27%).