Communicating via photographs: A gendered analysis of Olympic athletes’ visual self-presentation on Instagram
By A. Geurin-Eagleman, L. Burch. 2016
298 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The purpose of this study was to examine Olympic athletes’ self-presentation on Instagram, a social media outlet on which users post photographs as their primary communication mechanism, in order to develop an understanding of the ways in which athletes use this medium as a communication and marketing tool to build their personal brand. Additionally, this research sought to understand whether differences existed between the utilisation of Instagram by male and female athletes. Drawing on Goffman's (1959) theory of self-presentation, this study examined eight purposively selected Olympic athletes’ Instagram photos. Findings revealed similarities to previous research on athletes’ use of written social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, as the majority of photos posted by athletes were personal in nature, thus reflecting backstage performance strategies according to self-presentation theory. The results indicated that female athletes were more likely to share photos of themselves and photos taken in private settings, but male athletes who posted a wider variety of photos encouraged greater engagement from their followers. Personal brand management implications for athletes and sport organisations are examined in greater detail in the discussion.
Subfields: Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96a027da736d7ae4531b23fdaf862af8c87f9fff
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Gender Studies
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Exploring athlete brand image development on social media: the role of signalling through source credibility (2020, background): “…directly to platforms like Twitter (Agyemang & Williams, 2016; Lebel & Danylchuk, 2014; Pegoraro, 2010), Facebook (Geurin-Eagleman & Clavio, 2015; Pronschinske, Groza, & Walker, 2012) or Instagram (Anagnostopoulos, Parganas, Chadwick, & Fenton, 2018; Geurin, 2017; Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016).”
- Elite Female Athletes’ Perceptions of New Media Use Relating to Their Careers: A Qualitative Analysis (2017, methodology): “Echoing the recommendations of both Lebel and Danylchuk (2014) and Geurin-Eagleman and Burch (2016), this decision could have a lasting impact on athletes’ longterm image, and therefore it is important that athletes are educated about the potential outcomes of posting certain types of content and…”
- The Rise of an Athlete Brand: Factors Influencing the Social Media following of Athletes (2020, unknown): “Social media platforms allow athletes to construct their personal brand without much fi nancial investment, as they are easy to use and have other benefi ts related to reach and accessibility (cf., Eagleman, 2013; Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016).”
- Athlete branding via social media: examining the factors influencing consumer engagement on Instagram (2020, methodology): “Geurin-Eagleman and Burch (2016) demonstrated the appeal of Attractive Appearance content to consumers, finding that images depicting an athlete’s physical attractiveness achieved significantly more engagement than other content types.”
- ‘Instafamous’ – credibility and self-presentation of micro-celebrities on social media (2019, background): “The development of digital media means that well-known personalities must ‘put on a performance’ in social media through various displays of self (Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016; Marshall, 2010).”