ROOKIES AND RETWEETS: INSIDE THE WORLD OF UNIVERSITY SPORT, SOCIAL MEDIA AND HAZING RITUALS

Publication Date

12-6-2024

Document Type

Contribution to a Book

Publication Title

Research in the Sociology of Sport

Volume

23

DOI

10.1108/S1476-285420240000023010

First Page

165

Last Page

182

Abstract

With social media use on the rise and little indication that sport team hazing ceremonies are declining, the amount and types of exposure and awareness of hazing and its potentially detrimental impacts are shifting for athletes, the public and school administrators alike. This chapter describes relationships between hazing in sport and social media use in university athletics. These two areas of research have been investigated separately but warrant a closer examination to understand how they are intertwined. In this analysis, we include findings from our larger national-scale sport hazing study that produced a second stream of data specific to social media use. Data are derived from interviews with university athletic directors, coaches and athletes to spotlight: (1) uses of social media in the context of athletics, (2) their understanding of social media’s relationship to hazing and (3) experiences with social media and hazing education. We also present recommendations provided by the researchers, and athletes, coaches and athletic directors, for athletic administration use in developing educational and informational resources that address the interconnections between social media use and hazing. This chapter describes how athletic departments and coaches perceivedand (dis)engaged from discussions around social media, the ways that university athletes and teams engaged in hazing practices, the diversified and multiple uses of social media on teams differing by gender, highlighting a (lack) of educational programming provided for athletes by their university athletic departments centred around social media use and sport hazing as both separate and interconnected topics.

Keywords

education, hazing, Social media, sport culture, university athletics

Department

Kinesiology

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS