Lit review: Mind of an athlete

 

I chose to do my lit review on the mind of an athlete because I wanted to find out why they really post. It always seems that some professional athletes seem so nonchalant when they're out in public or doing interviews, and then I would follow them on social media and see that some of them have a bunch of posts or some don’t have a lot of posts. Most of it showed them working on their craft or something within that craft, and it made me think about what goes through their minds when they post. Especially when it comes to college athletes, with all the censoring and everybody telling them what they can and can’t post, and for some that prohibits them from doing so because of what they say or post getting taken out of context and for some I know it doesn’t really matter because they don’t post or tweet much. It's important to me as a fellow athlete because I know why I post but I really want to see why these other athletes post and does the fact that people like the NCAA and others trying to censor us and tell us what we can or can’t post affect what they post and in what ways are they affected. 

                                                         Methods 

To test out this theory I conducted an interview with one of my teammates, then I did a self assessment asking myself the same things ,and also did a little bit of digging on social media and analyzed them to prove my theory. 

 

                                                          

                                                         Analysis 

In my interview with my teammate I learned that the censoring that they try to put on us doesn’t affect him at all, which isn’t uncommon. Some people still post what they want while others might not post at all, my teammate also says even though he doesn’t post much he basically does it for himself and his friends. “I mostly do it when I look live asf, then I’ll put a fire ass caption and let all my friends go crazy in the comments.” Then after my self assessment going through the same questions, I realized that it was the same thing with me and why I post even though my friends might not go as crazy in the comments. In this study I learned that even though the higher ups try to censor us on what we can and can’t post on social media it doesn’t affect us at all because everyone has their own preference when it comes to posting.

Thinking Twice Before You Post: Issues Student‐Athletes Face on Social Media - Sanderson - 2018 - New Directions for Student Services - Wiley Online Library

College Student Athletes and Social Media: The Psychological Impacts of Twitter Use in: International Journal of Sport Communication Volume 11 Issue 2 (2018) (humankinetics.com)