Self-Presentation in the Sport Industry: An Analysis of Professional Athletes' Twitter Profile Photograph

Studies (e.g., Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016) have found that athletes use social media for a variety of reasons, ranging from promoting themselves to interacting with fans. Athletes who engage in social media have an opportunity to present their respective images in numerous ways. One strategy is through the use of profile photographs, an option that is provided by various social networking sites. Social media profile photographs are important in an online self-presentation context (Siibak, 2010), and, as such, users attempt to construct positive self-images through such source publicity opportunities (Tsou et al., 2016). The current study utilized the content analysis method to examine professional athletes' Twitter profile photographs. In particular, the investigation involved analyses of the online self-presentations of male and female professionals (N = 871) in six prominent leagues: Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Basketball Association (NBA), Women's Tennis Association (WTA), Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour, and Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Tour. Furthermore, the study analyzed the face-ism phenomenon for gender (e.g., Cheek, 2016) and a content analysis was used to evaluate the Twitter profile images of professional athletes from the WNBA (n = 61), NBA (n = 399), LPGA Tour (n = 58), PGA Tour (n = 133), WTA (n = 96), and ATP (n = 124).;The findings of this study revealed that the female and male professional athletes used different criteria or methods when choosing their Twitter profile photographs (p < .05). WNBA, WTA, and LPGA Tour players used predominately casual-themed photographs (e.g., casual attire, casual locations, casual photographic style). On the other hand, NBA, ATP, and PGA Tour players used more athletic themes (e.g., sport-related settings) in their Twitter profile photographs. Regarding the face-ism phenomenon, the results of the study found that there was no difference in the facial prominence displayed between female and male athletes, F(1, 756) = .49, p > .05, across the three sports, F(2, 756) = .60, p > .05, analyzed. Furthermore, those athletes who attracted more followers and had more influential Twitter accounts depicted themselves with greater facial prominence (p < .01). Lastly, in terms of brand exposure, male athletes' profile photographs were more likely to include brand logos than their female counterparts, chi2(1, N = 871) = 6.73, p < .01. An examination and discussion of these findings as well as the study's implications and recommendations are provided at the end of this manuscript.