Social Media Agenda Setting in Sport

Abstract

Media play an important role in promoting sporting heroes. Social media offerings by the likes of Facebook and Twitter trans form the well-known process of agenda setting and mediatisation into a process we call “social media agenda setting”. This contribution starts with a brief over view of social media offerings during the London Olympic Games 2012. This is followed by a closer look at a theoretical model and an evaluation of the potential impact and consequences of this process. The analysis of different forms of themati sation and mediatisation of sporting heroes will be shown with the help of case studies of German athletes during the Olympic Games in London 2012. Measured by the influencing factors of “social media agen da setting”, Marcel Nguyen and Christoph Fildebrandt can be characterized as the most popular German athletes during the Olympic Games.