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Difficulties of Coming Out
Among Japanese Elite Athletes:
A media-studies inquiry into the case of soccer player Shiho
Shimoyamada
By Anni Ström
Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies Master Thesis 30 HE credits
Japanese Studies
East Asian Languages and Cultures Master course 120 HE credits Spring term 2020
Supervisor: Jaqueline Berndt Examiner: Ewa Machotka
1 Difficulties of Coming Out for Japanese Elite Sportsmen:
A media-studies inquiry into the case of soccer player Shiho Shimoyamada
Anni Ström Abstract
The 2020 Summer Olympics and the Paralympic Games were scheduled to take place in Tokyo. This sporting mega-event has affected change in the public and social spheres of the host country, Japan, but with regard to athletes’ gender and sexual orientation Japan’s mainstream media seem still considerably biased. Little has been reported on openly LGBTpro athletes from Japan and their involvement in advocating the Olympic values: diversity, inclusiveness and equality. This thesis investigates how LGBT icons are portrayed by the media, or more specifically, the national newspapers, LGBT community sources and social media, and with regard to the first it questions whether there are differences in the portrayal of Shiho Shimoyamada, the first openly homosexual female soccer athlete from Japan, between Japanese and English language media. In the attempt to interrelate sports studies, queer studies and media studies, this thesis investigates in the main the representation of Shiho Shimoyamada in Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s second largest newspaper, and in the English-language newspaper The Japan Times. It also provides an overview of the athlete’s self-representation on Twitter which relates closely to her LGBT activism. Investigation of the media sources is executed by qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected within 13 months (January 1, 2019 - February 28, 2020). Categorizing tweets by groups, the findings demonstrate gaps in media representation of socially important activism and presents the social media self-promotion strategies used by the athlete.
Keywords
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Conventions
This thesis uses the APA reference system. References are given as in-text citations within brackets, including the last name of the author and the year of publication, separated by a comma. In certain cases, the page number of the reference and the name of the publication are indicated in the brackets to simplify access to the information. Otherwise, the full reference is listed in the bibliography section. Japanese names and titles are translated where applicable, otherwise given in Japanese script. All translations are made by the author if not stated otherwise.
The names of the internet pages and newspapers are marked with italics. Both single and double quotation marks are used in the body of the text for direct citations, depending on the stile preferred by the original author. Footnotes indicate additional information, translations and dates of tweets.
Quotes in Japanese are translated into English, the original Japanese is omitted if not expressed otherwise.
LGBT abbreviation is used instead of LGBTQ+ following the pattern used in Japanese media. Links to tweets are omitted and are indicated with the date of the tweet in footnotes.
The list of appendixes is provided as additional information and may include grammar inconsistencies.
Romanization of Japanese words follows the revised Hepburn system. Long vowels are marked with a macron, except in cases of English-language publications where the macron is omitted. Japanese names are indicated in the Western name order, first name before surname. This thesis uses term ‘media’ as a noun in plural form (singular: medium), though the author is aware of the cases when ‘media’ is used in a singular form in disciplines like journalism.
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Acknowledgements
This thesis would never have come to be if not for all the help, assistance, guidance and inspiration I received from my supervisor Professor Jaqueline Berndt. From the bottom of my heart, thank you! You helped me when I was feeling down and gave me words of
encouragement and wisdom which resulted in this finished thesis. Your input, feedback and wholehearted engagement in my research have saved me so many times! Also, I would like to thank my family, my daughter Sofia and my life-partner Mattias. You have always been there for me and gave me invaluable support and encouragement. Thank you for believing in me! Last, but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the dedicated staff at Stockholm University’s department for East Asian languages. Without all of you, none of this would be possible. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ... 5
BACKGROUND ... 5
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ... 6
THEORY AND METHODOLOGY ... 6
PRINTED MASS MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICES IN JAPAN... 8
STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ... 9
DELIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH ... 10
CHAPTER 1: MASS MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF ELITE ATHLETES CONTEXTUALIZED BY GENDER AND SEXUALITY ... 11
OLYMPIC GAMES AND LGBT ISSUES IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA ... 11
PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES AND COMING-OUT IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MEDIA ... 12
COMING OUT IN JAPAN: AS REVEALED IN JAPANESE ACADEMIC RESEARCH... 17
THE SCOPE OF MEDIA ... 18
GENDERING JAPANESE SPORTS IN MEDIA: SAMURAI BLUE AND NADESHIKO JAPAN ... 19
CHAPTER 2: REPRESENTATION BY OTHERS AND SELF-REPRESENTATION OF ATHLETES ON SOCIAL MEDIA ... 23
GOFFMAN’S THEORY APPLIED TO SOCIAL MEDIA STUDIES ... 24
SELF-BRANDING ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS ... 25
ROLE OF TWITTER FOR ATHLETES’ PUBLIC IMAGE ... 27
CHAPTER 3: THE CASE OF SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA ... 30
SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA: FIRST COMING OUT INTERVIEW AND LGBT ACTIVISM ... 30
ASAHI SHIMBUN ABOUT SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA ... 32
FUMIE SUGURI AND YŌKO YAMADA ... 34
THE JAPAN TIMES ABOUT SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA ... 36
LGBT ISSUES IN ASAHI SHIMBUN AND THE JAPAN TIMES ... 36
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE WEB SITES ABOUT SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA ... 37
SHIHO SHIMOYAMADA’S SELF-REPRESENTATION ON TWITTER (@SMYMD125) ... 39
QUANTITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS: ... 41
GENDER-BIAS TOWARDS FEMALE LGBT MAINSTREAM MEDIA? ... 42
CONCLUSION ... 43
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 45
APPENDIX 1 ... 50
APPENDIX 2 ... 57
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Introduction
Background
In the past decades a large body of academic research has been published on issues of sexual minorities in Japan (McLelland, Suganuma, & Welker, 2007) (Chi, 2016), (DiStefano, 2006) (Kawasaka, 2018). In view of the (now postponed) Tokyo Olympics 2020, which is promoted, among other things, in the name of “diversity”, the question arises how the issue of sexual minorities relates to the field of sports. Little has been written about openly gay Japanese top athletes and their media representation. At first glance, this appears to be due to the lack of coming out among Japanese athletes, but as this thesis demonstrates, it can also be traced back to news media’s highly selective interest, ignoring certain cases at the expense of others. This thesis combines ideas from the fields of gender, media and sports studies to investigate the representation of homosexual athletes in Japanese elite sports, in particular the media’s hand-picking of potentially iconic figures, that is to say, public figures whose achievements are significant to represent the LGBT community. Coming out among elite athletes, as studies demonstrate, is important for normalizing LGBT individuals in society. While inspired by the empirical research by American sociologist and sexologist Eric Anderson (Anderson,
Magrath, & Bullingham, 2016) and the scholar of football and gender studies Rory Magrath (Magrath, 2019) on mass media’s impact onto the creation of LGBT icons among the uncloseted elite athletes in the UK and the US, this thesis focuses on the Japanese context in 2020, before the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games (currently postponed to 2021). The situation of Japanese sexual minority athletes and their coming out have already been comprehensively discussed by the scholar of cultural studies, Satoko Itani (Itani, 2015). This thesis adds to her groundbreaking research by bridging mainstream media, such as newspapers, social media like Twitter and community groups of LGBT and sports-fandom subcultures to provide a broader picture of how the representation of an openly homosexual athlete is afforded by different media. At the center of this thesis is the role of nation-wide public media, namely the external perspective onto athletes, which finds its counterpart in athletes’ self-representation and self-branding on social media.
This role is investigated through the case of the first openly gay female soccer player Shiho Shimoyamada (born December 12, 1994), comparing her portrayal in the second largest
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national Japanese-language newspaper, Asahi Shimbun (digital edition) and the English-language The Japan Times (digital edition).
This thesis argues that the creation of an iconic image is a complex process, which always interconnects the athlete’s profile with a specific frame suitable for mass media. Various interests are at play here: economic, political, ideological, technological and others, and they highlight news issues along the demand line. For instance, Shimoyamada, featured in 2020 in
The Japan Times as ‘Japan’s first openly gay professional athlete’ (McKirdy, 2020), had long
been preceded by the figure skater Fumie Suguri, who had publicly come out as bisexual in 2014 and the eleven-time world champion in arm wrestling, Yōko Yamada, also a bisexual sports figure. Nevertheless, despite the similarities in the athletes’ coming-out stories (female, uncloseted via social media posts, professionally active), out of the three only Shimoyamada’s coming out story became recognized for its potential to represent the LGBT community in Japanese mass media.
Research questions
Against this backdrop, the research questions addressed in this thesis are: 1. How do mass media represent non-heterosexual professional athletes?
2. How does the self-branding on social media differ from (1.), and to which benefit for the athletes?
3. How does the media coverage of LGBT issues differ between Japanese-language and English-language mass media?
The combined analysis aims to provide explanations for the mass media’s selective interest in non-heterosexual athletes in the context of the Olympic Games 2020. It also illuminates the successful self-branding strategies of LGBT icons on social media.
Theory and Methodology
Sexual minority studies are researched from a variety of perspectives: sociological, anthropological, historical, cultural, linguistic and many others. Even when limiting the research of LGBT-issues to Japan and elite sports, the amount of relevant publications on the subject remains too large for the scope of one thesis.1 Theoretically, this thesis leans on
1 For further studies: Masasami Tamagawa (Masami Tamagawa, 2019), Mark McLelland (McLelland &
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Erving Goffman’s theory of representation of self (Goffman, 1959). Widely applied in social sciences and media studies (Qi, 2018), this theory explains how individual behavior relies on the self’s projection onto other actors in daily interaction. Goffman maintains, that every person actively affects how they wish to be seen by others. When applying this theory to the analysis of user behavior on social media, self-promotion and self-branding come to the fore, understood as the interplay between user and followers, or more specifically, the user guiding their followers to apprehend them in a desirable way. However, the followers, too, play an active part choosing how to perceive the user, as Goffman’s theory helps to understand. The main Japanese academic reference for this thesis is the already mentioned PhD thesis by Satoko Itani (Itani, 2015) an investigation of queer culture in sports and the media from an empirical perspective, looking at both professional and college sports. Itani holds MA degrees in Sport Humanities (2008) and Sexuality Studies (2008), as well as a PhD in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development (2015). Since 2018 Itani has been assistant professor at Kansai University. Her research centers around queer politics and activism, and Neoliberalism and Colonialism in sport mega-events.
Another central reference for this thesis is the research by the two British scholars of sociology, sexology and sports, Eric Anderson and Rory Magrath, who both studied the Olympic Games and the coming-out phenomenon among athletes. Eric Anderson is a Fellow of the International Academy of Sex Research, who authored eight books and over 25 peer-viewed academic articles on gender, masculinity and coming out in sports. This thesis leans in particular Out in Sport (Anderson, Magrath, & Bullingham, 2016), which provides in-depth interviews with non-heterosexual athletes and builds on an extensive body of discourse analysis on the subject. The topic of coming out in sports is also discussed by Anderson’s former PhD student, Rory Magrath, in his book LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media (Magrath, 2019).
The research by Anderson, Magrath and Itani helps to draw a picture of the problematics which professional athletes face if they decide to come out of the closet. However, media, including social media, also play an important role in an athlete’s coming out, as this thesis illustrates, because of the possibility to affect their fans by representing themselves via social media. Consequently, after explaining the dynamics of online interaction between users, this thesis turns to corpus search of the term “LGBT” within the archives of The Japan Times and
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By doing this, the thesis seeks to establish, whether LGBT as a term is used in Japanese mass media and, if so, how often. It turned out that LGBT is widely written about in both sources. However, the corpus search on “Shiho Shimoyamada”, in particular, in both English and Japanese, returned only two and one mentions in Asahi Shimbun and The Japan Times respectively.
Questioning whether the lack of interest in Shimoyamada’s profile by the national newspapers can be traced back to the athlete’s insufficient engagement in LGBT-community issues or her low profile as an athlete (although sport-specific sites on social media tell a different story), this thesis looks at the Twitter activity of Shimoyamada. The lack of mass media interest in her can also be explained by the fact that coming-outs by female athletes are not considered interesting enough – which it is, of course, for community sites.
Tweets posted within a 13-months period are analyzed within a framework adopted by earlier academic research of social media, namely by grouping the tweets according to categories: Personal (P), Gender (G), LGBT(L) and Sport (S). Her tweets between January 1, 2019 and February 28, 2020 reveal important information about her public involvement in gender, sports and sexual minority issues on a broad level.
Printed Mass Media and Social Media Services in Japan
TV remains the most popular mediumin Japan, according to the Reuters Report on News Consumption in different countries of the world (digitalnewsreport.org, 2019). Nevertheless, printed media in the form of daily and weekly newspapers continue to be in wide circulation. The largest four among the morning and evening newspapers named in the Reuters report are
Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun. For the framework
of this research, Asahi Shimbun and The Japan Times (English-language newspaper) have been chosen as they represent the second and the first most popular daily newspapers in Japanese and English language respectively, and both provide digital versions, which simplifies the access and reaches broader groups of population. When it comes to
consumption of digital news the greatest number of consumers 54%, (digitalnewsreport.org, 2019) turn to search engines like Yahoo.co.jp with its section for news. However, despite the popularity of printed media in Japan, not every newspaper provides digital version of its complete contents. For example, Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest newspaper which has a circulation of 8,474,483 copies of the morning edition ( Yomiuri Shimbun, 2020), does not provide full open access to its online contents, and the digital version can only be accessed as
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additional feature bundled with print. Asahi Shimbun, on the other hand, began developing its online contents considerably earlier, and has a number of electronic editions that target both Japanese and English-speaking user groups. Asahi digital, according to the same report, is the largest digital newspaper in terms of readership, and represents 6% of overall national news consumption. Only 7% of users pay for full content but the preview versions remain widely accessed. Nevertheless, Asahi Shimbun retains the second place among the most read daily newspapers in Japanese households2, and therefore is a justified choice for mapping how the
image of Shimoyamada is represented in mainstream media on a nation-wide scale.
Additionally, there is a difference between various consumer groups with respect to the means of news consumption, which directly relate to the age, economic class, gender and occupation. For instance, the Reuters Report mentions that younger generations rely on their smartphones to keep themselves updated, not least by browsing through social media channels or by receiving push notifications from news applications. Among the top five social media sources consumed in Japan are YouTube, Line, Twitter, Facebook and Niconico Douga. This research
concentrates on microblogging service Twitter, which comes to the fore in chapter 2 and 3. The role of Twitter as a powerful tool for marketing of individuals, products and policies have been widely recognized in academia (Hong, 2013) (Curran & Kevin O'Hara, 2011) (Rinaldo, 2011) and is therefore chosen for analysis within the framework of this thesis.
Structure of the thesis
This thesis contains three chapters divided by topics, which address directly the research questions. The first chapter, Mass Media Representation of Elite Athletes Contextualized by Gender and Sexuality, introduces the terms ‘professional athlete’, ‘elite athlete’, and ‘media’. This is followed by an overview of how the role of media in sports, especially with regards to non-heterosexual athletes, has been researched so far, leaning mainly on Anderson’s research and the research of Japanese scholars on the coming-out phenomenon. In order to illuminate the role of mass media in Japan, this thesis focuses on soccer, which is highly gendered. Occasionally the women’s team is even presented through a sexist image. This context allows to draw a clear picture of how media coverage of an athlete’s coming out can affect their whole career. The Tokyo Olympic Games of 2020 have foregrounded advocacy for sexual
2 The Reuters Report counts newspaper consumption per household, not per individual. For details see (digitalnewsreport.org, 2019)
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minority rights in Japan. Consequently, this thesis looks at how national mainstream media have promoted the Olympic values (here, unity in diversity).
The second chapter, Representation by Others and Self-representation of Athletes on Social Media, reflects on the risks for professional athletes connected to their public coming out and the complexity of self-representation on social media. It introduces the concepts of ‘micro-celebrity’ and ‘self-branding’, and it exemplifies challenges and benefits of obtaining a ‘micro-celebrity’ status. In addition, a list of qualifiers that enable to sort tweets under four categories by content intention, that is, personal tweets, sport-related, gender-related and LGBT tweets, are suggested to simplify the process of content analysis in the following case study.
The third chapter, The Case of Shiho Shimoyamada, looks at the portrayal of a
non-heterosexual female soccer player who had her coming out in February 2019 via Twitter. Her case allows us to illuminate the role of different media (mainstream and social) as well as cultural differences in the representation of LGBT topics. The results of the analysis accumulated by the corpus search in the newspaper archives, analysis of Shiho Shimoyamada’s tweets in the period of 13 months, and the sample of the athlete’s representation in the English-language community online pages (LGBT and sports fans) enable the identification of cultural differences in representation. Additionally, this chapter provides the reader with the biography and career path of Shiho Shimoyamada and brings a comparison with the two openly bisexual Japanese sportswomen, Fumie Suguri and Yōko Yamada in terms of media attention. Furthermore, followed by the analytical comparison between Asahi Shimbun, the Japan Times and Twitter, a discussion of specific findings against the backdrop of the information introduced in the chapter 1 and chapter 2 is provided.
Delimitations of Research
The case discussed in this thesis has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a means to prevent the further spread of the pandemic, the International Olympic Committee has decided to postpone the Games of the XXXII Olympiad to summer 2021 at the latest
(www.olympic.org, 2020). This unprecedented act in the history of the Olympics caused frictions and heated debates among public and press. Due to the shift in attention to health-related issues and economic consequences the media is no longer foregrounding the Olympic slogan ‘unity in diversity’, which is central for this thesis. Nevertheless, the results of this
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research are only partially affected; they are still representative for the fields of media, sports and queer studies.
The analyzed newspaper articles in Asahi Shimbun and The Japan Times are from the period of one year, between January 2019 and February 2020. The same period is used for content analysis of Twitter posts by Shimoyamada. While this thesis is aware of later publications in both printed and digital form which paid attention to Shimoyamada’s LGBT activism, only the publications preceding the postponement in March 2020 have been considered.
Finally, it should be noted that this thesis focuses on openly bisexual and homosexual female elite athletes in Japan, while leaving out other sexual minority groups, as well as LGBT individuals involved in non-professional sports.
Chapter 1: Mass Media Representation of Elite Athletes Contextualized by Gender and Sexuality
In the context of the Olympic Games, athletes are seen as strong advocates for equality, inclusion and diversity. Studies illustrate that despite the growing number of outed athletes in professional sports, many decide to stay closeted. In the context of Japan,the reasons behind not disclosing their sexuality are illustrated by Japanese scholarly research. The strive for equality between the genders3 in professional sports of Japan is problematized basing on the
state of female and male soccer as reflected in the media coverage.
Olympic Games and LGBT Issues in Mainstream Media
Japan as a host country promotes female sports and gender diversity as part of the Olympic values. The Olympic Games of 2020 aim for inclusion, anti-discrimination and long-term legacies for the generations to come beyond national interests. However, Japan is not only one of the countries with a low rank on the gender equality list, it also remains in the list of countries that do not recognize same sex marriages (Paletta, 2019). It has received
3 This thesis concentrates on binary gender definition: male and female, for inclusion of trans-gender athletes in sports and their representation by media read further in Satoko Itani (Itani, Japanese Female and 'Trans' Athletes: Negotiating Subjectivity and Media Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and Nation., 2015)
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criticism from transnational human rights organization for its low levels of education on gender diversity issues, and for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The International Olympic Committee exercises a considerable level of influence onto host countries and examines whether they are qualified and capable of fulfilling obligations in accordance with the hosting contract before the start of the sporting mega-event. This applies, among others, to the promotion of inclusiveness and diversity. Since Tokyo won the bid for hosting the Olympic Games in September 2013, the Japanese mainstream media have been attentive to LGBT issues as part of the anticipated Olympic celebration. However, media do not pay equal attention to male and female achievements in sports.
Needless to say, a gender bias is evident in sports, not only in Japan: the status of women’s and men’s sports differ economically (win pot in competitions, sponsorship, participation, fan culture), legally (rules, trainings, health issues) and even culturally (appropriation of
cheerleading by men in Iran, weightlifting by women in North Korea). But the enhancement of gender diversity deepens the problem. Regulations, like the Olympic Clause against Discrimination on basis of Gender and Sexuality in Sports (2014) are one good example, which, however, is not binding for the national sports associations beyond the Olympic Games.
Homophobia causes discrimination and hostility and leads to the decrease of self- esteem and performance (Wright. & Bonita, 2012). Western scholars determined that coming out can become beneficial for self-esteem, self-affirmation, physical and mental health of an
individual (Greenfield, 2008). Furthermore, disclosing one’s sexuality can be seen as a valuable asset for normalizing LGBT-identifying individuals in a society. Media play a significant part in this regard. According to gender scholar Peter Stott, the media is
‘regulating “acceptable” notions of gender and sexuality’ (Stott, 2018: 76) and is therefore vital for advocating the normalization of LGBT individuals in society. On a broader scale, according to scholars of political science, Phillip M. Ayoub and Jeremiah Garretson “Media can play a transnational role in shaping political attitudes towards sexuality and minorities in general, especially affecting the views of more impressionable, younger individuals.” (Ayoub & Garretson, 2017: 1055)
Professional Athletes and Coming-out in English and American Media
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Greg Bianchi in his article for Sports Journal defines professional sports as follows:
“The difference between amateur and professional athletes is that professional athletes receive payment for their employment, where amateurs do not (Bohlander & Snell, 2001). The system of professional sports is a high performance work system…As athletes hone their skill and continue performing at a high level, the organization builds their business from the success gained by their sports teams.” (Bianchi, 2006: no pagination).
It can appear problematic to distinguish between professional, elite and top sports: for instance, this is valid, among others, in case of American wrestling, arm wrestling,
bodybuilding and cheerleading , all of which and frequently associated with entertainment, but also require considerable level of physical training and skill of performance. The relationship between top sports and elite sports is often inconclusive, but professionalism is directly related to the level of engagement and economic funding for the sport activity (salaries for athletes), competition (win pot) and representation of a country. However, women in competitive ‘masculine’ sports (like rugby, basketball, hockey) are at risk of being excluded, as they do not receive enough sponsorship deals to make a living. This thesis defines professional athletes as sportsmen and sportswomen who compete on higher levels in national and international competitions, leaving the economic detail aside.4 ‘Professionalism’
within sports is seen here with regard to the levels of personal engagement, defined by the status of the athlete in society. Media attention to the athlete’s profile is important; however not all professional, especially female, athletes receive sufficient media coverage.
Nevertheless, this thesis looks at the examples of sportswomen who both have gained media recognition for their achievements and have positioned themselves high in the national rankings.
Professional athletes often become representative figures who inspire masses. Shiho
Shimoyamada, the first openly gay soccer player from Japan, acknowledged in her interview with Asahi Shimbun, republished on the English-language news site pinknews.com that she was ‘dissatisfied with the Olympics organizers’ current efforts to promote LGBT+
participation in sports’ (pinknews.co.uk, 2019). She further explains that ‘you don’t see the
4 Shiho Shimoyamada is still considered by media as a pro athlete, despite playing without a monthly
salary. It does not negatively affect her status, as supported by demand of her lectures, speeches in
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face of a LGBT person, [among athletes] …the message will be powerful of an actual LGBT athlete sends a message.”
However, coming out publicly can pose consequences for an athlete’s professional career. In his book LGBT Athletes in Sports Media (2018) Magrath explains, that the examples of professional athletes’ coming outs while being still active in their career, remain limited. Despite the overall positive encouragement and support of LGBT community when fans, for instance, exhibit rainbow colored shoelaces and hairbands during sport events (Holmes, 2019), the reasons for the top athletes to hide their non-heterosexuality are numerous. Sociologist and gender-studies scholar Eric Anderson (Anderson, Magrath, Bullingham, 2016) has shown, that prior to the public outing the athletes themselves have to consider the consequences. Personal responsibility is, for example, required with regard to the differences in playing team sports and competing individually. In competitive team sports undesirable behavior of a single player can jeopardize prospective contracts for the entire team, both directly and indirectly. At the same time, positive media attention is aspired by everyone, whether team player or individual.
Firstly, the interest towards female team sports is lower due to the scale of participation and financing which can make coming out easier. Additionally, the fanbase of male sports is prone to higher hostility. However, Anderson et al. discovered several cases of female and male coming outs that act reversely, which he relates to culture within sports. For instance, when one female player in a soccer team was accused of being lesbian, the whole team fell ‘under suspicion’, which was not the case with male sport teams (Anderson, 2016: 56), whereas a homosexual football player was seen as one singular gay player in a team of otherwise heterosexual mates. However, in homophobic countries like Russia, the hostility may target the whole team independently of gender. To understand better why so few athletes come out, which, as this thesis argues, hinders the normalization of diversities in society, the empirical studies by Anderson, Magrath and Itani foreground the numbers of openly
homosexual athletes of both genders 5 in various sports types.
The scholars have documented the disproportion between the levels of participation in professional sports by homosexual men and women (Anderson, Magrath, Bullingham, 2016).
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While gay male participation is proven scarce, female gay athletes appear overrepresented in masculine sports like soccer (Itani, 2015). Anderson et al. reason that when taking the
proportion of homosexual men in the population of a country (here, the US, 2015), and then compare it to the percentage of the male population who take part in sports, the result should be the same, that is, at about 2,8% of the US population. But based on the number of openly gay athletes, the percentage was determined to be closer to 0,03% (year 2015). Anderson suggests that there could be a number of possible explanations. One of which can be related to what Anderson calls the participation hypothesis (2016: 92) or the assumption that
homosexual men prefer leisure activities (clubs, parties) to sports. Even when they choose to engage in sports, continues Anderson, they prefer cheerleading and dancing to hockey and football. Anderson provides empiric evidence supporting this hypothesis, based on the interviews with openly gay college students who engaged in both sort of these sports. Accordingly, the overrepresentation in certain types of sports is proportionate to the underrepresentation of the investigated group in others.
The second hypothesis refers to the assumptions of homophobia in sports. Anderson suggests that for coming out of the closet the unanimous support of the team is required. If only one member is hostile towards sexual minorities, the athlete will choose to remain closeted (Anderson, 2016: 91). Homophobia can give rise to homohysteria: the obsession to constantly prove to others that one is not gay6. Also, athletes of team sports often have a
culture of belonging and do not wish to be perceived differently. Sporting identity often functions as their ‘master identity’, meaning that athletes see themselves in the first place as sportswo/men, distinguished by their professional skills and not their sexuality. Personal life is often expected to be deprioritized during professional interactions with other players. Hence, the coming out becomes problematic, even among the members of a team with a positive attitude to LGBT persons. When it comes to professional competitions, the situation worsens along with the limitation of opportunities. Magrath (2016 cited in Anderson 2016: 91) discovers that many athletes stay closeted due to internationalization related to traveling and playing against teams who represent countries with high levels of homophobia, like Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Despite recent improvements, especially after 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the fear of hostility towards players and their fans on basis of sexuality remains a real concern for event organizers. It puts pressure on homosexual athletes, in
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particular if they have been subjected to discrimination earlier in their career, which affects their performance. Staying closeted ensures that homophobic outbursts are minimized under stressful conditions of playing abroad.
The two sociologists, Robertson and Giulianotti, have combined the international
hypothesis with the migration hypothesis (2009, cited in Anderson 2016: 91) which pertains to players who are lent out to highly homophobic countries that exercise capital punishment in case of suspected homosexuality. This worsens the choices of contract for openly homosexual athletes.
Sociologist Scott Ogawa (Ogawa, 2014: 295)7 also looked at the disproportion of gay
persons in sports and related it to inability on various levels of masculinity of physique of homo- and heterosexual persons. As Ogawa puts it, male homosexuals often have a more feminine body (Bailey, 2003) and, compared to more physically equipped sportsmen, lose in advantage “to make it to the top” of elite teams. This hypothesis is also valid reversely, namely for homosexual female athletes who are, according to Anderson, overrepresented in competitive team sports. More masculine body features help lesbian athletes to advance in rough sports like soccer and hockey (Anderson, 2016: 92).
The final hypothesis that would explain the low number of comings outs in sports pertains to selection (Anderson 2016: 93). Anderson suggests that professional homosexual athletes, both male and female, choose to come out only to a limited circle of friends, but stay closeted for the media. In this case, the athlete is perceived as heterosexual by the general public and the media, without becoming vulnerable to public announcement.
Anderson et al conclude that all the hypotheses listed above have reasonable validity and have been proved to be applicable to a limited extend when contextualized. For instance, sports are assumed to be a highly homophobic niche per default, although the attitudes of the younger generations towards differ from the ones expressed by the older generations.8 Of
course, the cultural and socio-political contexts in each country play a role as well as whether the analysis concentrates on competitive team sports or individual athletes. As demonstrated above, gender, too, is essential. Nevertheless, the reasons why female and male homosexual elite athletes refrain from coming out to the mass media can be similar, while the
consequences may be different in every case.
7 Ogawa’s findings are in short presented in (Anderson, 2016: 93) 8 Further on it see chapter 3
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Coming Out in Japan: as Revealed in Japanese Academic Research
Having outlined the reasons why top athletes stay closeted, this thesis returns to the question of sexual minorities in contemporary Japan. The most important unit to examine diversity would be society itself, and how marginalized groups operate within it. One way to
investigate this is through what LGBT people say about their situation, and how mainstream media portray it.
According to the statistics provided by Dentsu Institute for 2018, the number of LGBT identifying persons in Japan has reached 8,9% of the population (dentsu.co.jp, 2019). Japan’s academia provides a number of interesting research subjects within LGBT studies, some of which are presented here in short.
Japanese sociologist and gender studies scholar, Masami Tamagawa (Tamagawa, 2018) conducted empirical research about the attitudes of sexual minorities towards disclosing their sexuality to their parents. His exploratory study is based on the analysis of 46 narrations of LGBT people who had come out to one or both parents. Tamagawa’s research shows that the pattern of coming out and the reasons to remain closeted can be significantly different from the ones identified by Western scholars9. For example, coming outs to mothers is more
frequent in Japan than to fathers. However, in some cases, the mothers’ reactions can be highly negative, even physically violent, as reported by bisexual females, transsexual MtF (male to female) and lesbians, whereas FtM (female-to-male) trans individuals and gay men did not report abusive behavior from their mothers’ sides. Tamagawa related this gendered distinction to the heteronormative socio-cultural context. Mothers are regarded as guardians of home and morality, and often carry sole responsibility for raising children. Therefore, mothers are likely to become prime targets of societal criticism, which may result in self-abuse and violent behavior as a consequence for raising a non-heterosexual child.
Another Japanese gender studies scholar, Keiichirō Ishimaru (Ishimaru, 2005) empirically researched the correlation between public coming out and personal self-affirmation. The study based on answers from 64 interviewees demonstrated that the coming out at work as such did not have any positive influence on the uncloseted LGBT person’s self-esteem. However, acceptance by colleagues played a tremendous role for building up confidence and self-affirmation.
Coming out in Japanese society is further described by gender scholar Michiko Sambe who conducted in-depth interviews with 19 LGBT children and 16 parents (Sambe, 2014). She
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discovered a strong correlation between the dependence of sexual minority children on their families and Japan’s socio-political milieu. She explains that LGBT children often decide to stay closeted within the family even after reaching adolescence, as they experience insecurity and often have problems to come out to both parents. The LGBT individuals under such conditions are prone to reluctance and unwillingness to start independent living, which also relates to the economic insecurity in present Japan. However, another reason lies in the absence of recognition for same-sex partnerships. Of course, the emphasis is on the family support if their LGBT child decides to come out. But the dilemma remains both for LGBT children and their families, whether to face the risks of homophobia or to avoid those by remaining closeted. Whichever the decision, the process of coming out, as demonstrated by the Japanese researchers, becomes an important factor which affects the future and quality of living of an LGBT child.
Importantly, there is a limited number of Japanese publications on coming out practices which are supported by a larger scale of empirical evidence collected over a certain period of time. The above-mentioned academic publications reveal, however, that coming out is central for understanding sexual minorities in Japan. Additionally, the representation of sexual minorities and their coming out stories in mainstream media of Japan is important.
Consequently, a short definition for media is required, which – as the following section shows - can differ depending on the discipline (Macnamara, 2005).
The Scope of Media
The point of media use is not to remediate something old into something new or to make something new to reappear in something old, but to allow the old and the new to hybridize into something unprecedented, and then go a step further so that one must reorganize one’s whole internal order in order to process the information streams, thereby becoming something unique and characteristic of oneself and the generation one is a part of. (Mulder, 2006: 295)
This thesis understands ‘media’ as an umbrella term for modern information providers, including both modern mass media and recent social media. For society at large and its political sphere, the first still assumes the status of mainstream media and is represented by news channels on TV, radio and online as well as printed and digital editions of newspapers. Mass media have basically delivered one and the same content to a large quantity of receivers who are treated as a homogenous “mass”. In terms of dispersion, differentiation and
interaction they are different from social media like Twitter. Of course, today, mass media and social media work hand in hand: mass media are becoming more individual and
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interactive, while social media may achieve a “mass” appeal, for example, in times of
elections. But as the case of Shimoyamada shows, there are fundamental differences between traditional national mass media and social media, last but not least because mass media often show a national inclination while social media focus on interest groups, or subcultural communities.
Before turning to the topic of how mass media can affect the image of individual sport figures, and how this can be analyzed, it is necessary to look at the relation between professional sports and mass media at a broader level, that is, the national one.
Gendering Japanese Sports in Media: Samurai Blue and Nadeshiko Japan
Japanese mass media portray sports, and promote various types of sports, in a highly gendered way.
Social scientists discuss this, among other things, with regard to Japan’s current demographic problems, the aging of its population and the negative childbirth index. According to
Mandujano-Salazar (2016), the young generation is frequently accused of failing to fulfill their duties to the nation by discarding the traditional Japanese family values of marrying, raising children and thus securing the work force for generations to come. But the economic downgrade of 21st century Japan forces young people to prioritize self - support rather than
building families. This phenomenon is closely related to the burden of caring for their elders without a sufficiently functioning state welfare system. Traditional patriarchal family values ensure strictly defined gender roles: where a man would be the bread-winner and provider for his family, and a woman would be described as Yamato Nadeshiko, a caring, modest
household carrier, who prioritizes the wishes and desires of her father, husband or son above her own (Itani, 2015). Whenever the economic situation in Japan in the past decades proved that women were required to actively participate in the work market, de-prioritize childbirth and housework in favor of raising the national economy, more women started building independent careers, abandoning the old female ideals.
Present-day Japanese women are no strangers to becoming sole providers; many choose a single childless life for the sake of their career. Female interest in ‘masculine’ types of sports has also become more widespread, particularly after the unexpected victory in the women’s FIFA World Cup in 2011.
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The name for the Japan’s women’s soccer team was chosen by the JFA (Japan Football Association) in 2004 and aimed to increase the popularity of female soccer by embedding the old national ideals with the concept of beauty, Nadeshiko (short from Yamato Nadeshiko).
According to Manjuano-Salazar, the year 2011 became a turning point for Japanese women’s soccer. Nadeshiko team dedicated their victory to the victims of the Fukushima disaster10, which had hit their homeland earlier the same year. The combination of the two
events elevated the status of Japanese women’s soccer. For months to come, the national female soccer team was widely promoted in various mainstream media; the athletes participated in interviews, host shows, radio and TV programs and were awarded with the National Award of Honor.
Itani asserts that the term “Nadeshiko”11, which is still used for the Japan’s
women’s soccer team, is frequently misunderstood by foreign scholars and even by Japanese mass media. For example, Kaori Shoji for The Japan Times (Shouji, 2013), reflects about the use of Yamato Nadeshiko and associates it with “the born and bred, quintessential Japanese woman, …who spends her day between polishing herself and polishing the windows.” But Nadeshiko is at the same time widely used in job descriptions and can be translated as a “generic willingness to clean toilets” and “handle nuka (fermented rice hulls)” on a daily basis, relating the jobs of lower status with women’s position in society.12 Furthermore,
sociologist Keiko Ikeda (Ikeda, 2014), insists that in female soccer Nadeshiko is an abbreviation for the term Yamato Nadeshiko and does not relate to a pink frilled carnation flower which associates with beauty and cuteness, as it was mentioned in the article by The
Japan Times , “Japan celebrates Woman’s World Cup win: “Nadeshiko” lifts the nation with
surprise victory over Americans”(July 19, 2011- McCurry ). Instead, ‘nadeshiko’ functions as a ‘nationalistic representation similar to “Samurai Japan” for men’s sports.’ (Ikeda, 2014: 102), both being metaphors for national-cultural representations in sports, and traditional gender-based idioms and images. Interestingly enough, according to Ikeda these images continue to exist and relate to the ‘traditional’, despite the attempt of the younger generations to move away from the past and re-invent the gender divisions in sports.
10 Nuclear plant disaster caused by the reactor meltdown.
11 Lit: frilled pink carnation flower; term used for personification of feminine ideal in Japan 12 Compare: national ideal of beauty and the lower class of women ready to perform the dirtiest jobs
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Soccer is frequently described as a male sport, and is, along with rugby and hockey, associated with masculinity, roughness, strength, speed and aggressive dynamics of team-play (Itani, 2015). However, recent decades have shown a spike of female interest across the world towards those more physically challenging sporting cultures that had previously been exercised exclusively by men. Of course, the levels of rough play and the amount of sustained injuries between the two sexes vary, but there are presently no sport types that completely exclude one or the other sex from engagement. Notwithstanding that women can partake in masculine sports the media coverage is often gender biased.
Daily newspapers, TV broadcasting channels and sports radio regularly report on male sport accomplishments, while women’s sports receive less coverage (Biscomb & Griggs, 2012) However, from 2015 there appears to be improvement and a shift towards a more gender-equal and fair sports coverage, as studies illustrate (Petty & Pope, 2019).
In predominately heteronormative and patriarchal societies like Japan, the equality between female and male representation in social areas of significance is under-achieved. As the field of sports, due to the preparation for the Olympic Games, becomes an important political and economic area for the host country, mainstream media cover the stories that project a positive national image to the international audience while foregrounding the Olympic values of gender-equality, gender diversity and inclusion.
So, how does the media’s portrayal of the male soccer team differ from the coverage of the Nadeshikos? According to Mandujano-Salazar, ‘Samurai Blue’, the Japan’s male soccer team, are predominantly portrayed as symbols of masculinity, pride and beauty. She asserts that ‘Samurai Blue’ players appear in elegant suits for advertising campaigns of their sponsors, and the players are frequently seen on covers of fashion magazines. At the same time, on the official page of the Japanese Football Association (JFA), the Nadeshiko female profiles include self-presentations like “My personal hobbies are cooking and shopping”, while the team’s photoshoot gives an air of underlined masculinity due to them wearing suits instead of dresses. Needless to say, the problematics of gendered media portrayal is complex:
‘nadeshiko’ term both poses the risk for ‘cutification’ of the soccer team and may even give rise to sexist attributes, as suggested by the article in The Japan Times and the association of dirty manual labor. The male soccer team, ‘Samurai Blue’, however, luckily escapes the charged portrayal by media, at least in relation to gender.
Most competitive elite team sports are considered to be a male-dominated niche, with regard to participation, promotion and financing. A 2011 report presented in Itani’s dissertation (Itani, 2015) illustrates how gendered participation in various types of sports in
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Japan is: for 888,000 male soccer players only 33,000 female soccer players were registered on nation-wide scale.
Statistical data from 2016 (Statistic Bureau Japan) (Saiki, 2020) still evince this gendered disproportion in sports participation. 23,2 % of male population between 20-24 engaged in soccer, while for the same age group, women’s participation was only 5,8%. Golf accounts for 9,2% among men and 3,7% for women. Jogging and marathon involve 25,5% of the 25-29-year-old-men and 16,6% of the respective women.
Even traditionally female-dominated sports, like figure skating and gymnastics, receive less media attention and consequently generate less income in participation and event viewership. According to Itani (Itani, 2015) the audience of female sports are almost
exclusively composed by women who themselves engage in these sports. According to the same research, male sports attract interest by both genders. Consequently, the mainstream media target the fields of sports that create most demand and generate the most profit in relation to viewership, readership, sponsorship and engagement.
The case of ‘Nadeshiko Japan’ can be seen as exceptional, compared to other female sports in Japan. The team’s image as ‘Japan’s heroines’ is still alive: the 2011 players had been elected to be the first runners of the Olympic Torch relay on Japanese grounds (Maeda, 2019). Due to the Corona pandemic13 it has been cancelled though.
According to The Japan Times (Kyodo The Japan Times, 2020), the Japanese women’s soccer is presently on the verge of reconstruction. The current Nadeshiko League (the top-flight) consists of two Nadeshiko divisions with ten clubs each, and a Challenge division with additional six clubs. The representatives from the first division possess higher ranked players while the second division players do not receive monthly salary and need to compromise on training time, often by sharing the field with a male soccer team. From 2021, a new schedule for professional national league will apply, which will allow female players to receive better conditions for training. As of 2019, the JFA (Japanese Football Association) set a new requirement for each upper-division club to employ at least one female executive, and gender equal representation among team staff is expected to be achieved within three years (The Japan Times, ‘New Japanese Soccer League…’, 2020 Feb. 16). The professional league includes six to ten clubs in the upper divisions. Each team would require signing up the minimum of five A contracts (no restriction on maximum salary of the player) and at least 10 names with B and C contracts (salary range limited). The teams would function on a budget of
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450 million JPY (4,1 million US dollars). However, at present time only one 1st division
Nadeshiko League team, INAC Kobe Leonessa, possesses sufficient funds to employ most of its players as professional athletes. The other nine clubs within the same division operate on a considerably smaller budget of 100 -200 million JPY. The article (The Japan Times, ‘New Japanese Soccer League…’, 2020 Feb. 16) subtly poses a question, whether the attempt of raising the status of Japan’s women’s soccer to a professional level which would approach the status of Japanese male soccer, is economically achievable, or whether this initiative will establish new forms of elitist culture in sports, enhanced by insufficient financing of female football. However, the aspiration for increased gender equality among coaches and
administrative staff within the clubs can be seen as an important step forward. Accordingly, the media pay attention to this subject.
Chapter 2: Representation by Others and Self-Representation of Athletes on Social Media
The previous chapter has illustrated that mainstream media in form of newspapers and TV play an important role in how LGBT people are seen by society at whole. It goes without saying, that celebrities have more potential influence over mass audiences. Furthermore, the coming outs of celebrities generate usually a positive public response14, which can advance
the normalization of LGBT persons in society. This chapter discusses how a user of social media can obtain ‘micro-celebrity’ status and improve the visibility of minority groups. The chapter begins with drawing the parallels between social interaction in the workspace (both on social media and within sports teams) leaning on Erving Goffman, and self-promotion (or self-branding) via social media. The academic findings tend to generalize findings from the examples of ‘tweeting’ by professional athletes which suggest an interrelation between the contents of the tweets and the number of followers.
14 From Shiho Shimoyamada’s interviews and Twitter posts on public reaction to her coming out; more
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Goffman’s Theory Applied to Social Media Studies
Social media services have been widely researched in the past decades. This thesis considers user behavior on social media channels from the perspective of Erving Goffman’s game theory and theory of presentation of self (symbolic interactionism). Goffman’s theories help to understand, why people present themselves differently depending on the situation, whether at work, online or to friends.
In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1954), Goffman suggests that
“…when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey (Goffman, 1954: 4). The implied interactionism is built on the outward appearance of action, that is, how an agent appears to others. Goffman distinguishes between two categories of others: the others whom we can affect (passive objects) and the others who are active players and can interfere with our intentions. In the first case, others apply their lens of perceptual rationality (contextualized by how we present ourselves to them) to us and, if we succeed, they accept us the way we want. On our turn, we judge them by their appearance and external qualities. Goffman asserts that workspace (culture in the office, within the team) constitutes the context for our self-presentation. He further suggests that we can control and guide the effect we cause by the way we act. Therefore, according to Goffman, the world should not be seen as something we find ourselves in, but rather as an object or a stage, which we can alter to suit our objectives. Furthermore, an agent’s action can very well cause others “to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan” (Goffman, 1954: 4). In other words, Goffman takes a clearly instrumentalist approach to human – human interaction, in where others are seen as ‘means’ that should be ‘led to’ the desirable action or response.
Another book, Strategic Interaction (Goffman, 1969) brings communication into play. Here, the interaction is compared to a game-like situation, and how we act is based on the reactions from other players. So, if the world is seen as an environment we can shape, then interaction with others can be seen as game of chess. On social media services users often choose to present themselves better than in real life. This adjustment of the online profile to the user’s specific needs can be explained by Goffman’s work-interaction model. The content and behavior of the agent actively guides the perception of others and is customized for the specific audience. This has been investigated by scholars of media, gender and social studies, not least by looking at ‘self-branding’ (Kietzmann, Silvestre, & Ian P. McCarthy, 2012) (Marwick, 2010) (Geurin-Eagleman, 2016). In the context of Twitter, self-branding helps to
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communicate outwards the cultural, political, and social ideologies and target broader audience. Simply put, we form (or guide) the perception of others by modelling our online behavior and profile to affect a specific group15. The larger the group we can reach, the wider
can be the scope of our influence. Therefore, celebrities, like Britney Spears and Donald Trump, who have millions of followers on social media, are committed Twitter users whose single tweet generates responses in less than a mouse-click. Having established the
importance of a strong online profile for spreading the message to masses, this thesis turns to how to achieve this goal. A clear definition of ‘celebrity’ is important in this context as well as an overview of strategies of self-branding and self-promotion and the respective risks online.
Self-branding on Social Media Channels
Anthropologist and media studies scholar Marcel Denesi asserts, that ‘celebrity’ is a blemished term in academia, which usually describes people who have gained excessive media attention and have the possibility to influence public life (Denesi, 2013). Media icons, he continues, possess celebrity status for a particular generation, but beyond that they are distinguished people who gained popularity for their achievement within a field. Much like religious icons, media icons imprint their existence in cultural history and maintain their iconic image even after death (Denesi, 2013).
This thesis focuses on the problematics of coming out among professional athletes, while recognizing the scope of impact the popular athletes can produce through social media channels. Thus, it becomes important to look at how an online profile can be strengthened, using the example of tweet activities by top elite athletes. What role does the contents of the tweets play? The starting points here is self- branding social media, further discussed in detail in the works of Susie Khamis and Tom Peters, the marketing scholars who concentrated their research on self-branding on social media. Although the early definitions of branding connect to marketing and selling a product by highlighting its uniqueness, since 1990s this concept is also applied to people. Personal branding (further, self-branding) is “…a matter of knowing your skills and persona, and presenting them on a well-arranged platter to others.” (Brems, Temmerman, Graham, & Broersma, 2016)
Self-branding has become a part of everyday life and resulted in expanding online
interactions, which vary in form and layout depending on purpose and medium. Social media
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channels present public and private profiles, including institutions, organizations, commercial sector and individual home users. One of the multiple segments of academic research on social media focuses on tools for self- branding within professional recruitment (Riffe, Lacy, & Frederick Fico, 2019), (Molyneus & Holton, 2018), (Gorbatov & Khapova, 2018). Another branch centers on risks of information reliability and internet dependence. This field looks even at teenagers’ self-promotion, content adjustment and the establishment of viral
challenges via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (Kaarina, 2019), (Brager, 2015) (Gonzales, 2011). In other words, social media can be used as powerful tool capable of shaping attitudes. However, while risking becoming a victim of global exposure, the power to create a desirable online image stays in the hands of the user. In short, it is not only the social media that affect how the world looks at us, but we ourselves shape our profiles adjusting them to our personal needs. In her publication ‘Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of Social Media
influencers’ (Khamis & Ang, 2017) Susie Khamis, Australian scholar of public
communications engaged in research of personal branding and cultural diversity since 2007, recognizes the potential of social media as a tool to gain attention, followers, likes and even jobs.
Sometimes called personal branding, due to the purpose of gaining commercial and cultural benefits (Khamis & Ang, 2017), self-branding is similar to branding a commercial product, or as the business and marketing scholar Tom Peters baptized it ‘The brand called You’ (Peters, 1997). By promoting oneself from a desirable angle, an individual has power to access
broader markets, target preferred interest groups and create a product ‘self’ that is in line with market demands. “We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer of the brand called You” (Peters, 1997). And further: “being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly – to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself” (ibid). In this context, presenting an outwards image of ‘self’ becomes the basis for operating in desired circles outside the actual face-to-face interaction. However, there are also risks: the profile can lose followers if the author does not engage sufficiently in interaction, does not respond to the comments, does not like/ follow back, or create information flows that bore out the audience.
The branding of an individual is problematic in terms of sustaining consistency. Khamis stresses that individual branding is utterly sensitive to alternations and hurdles. Hereby, it becomes apparent why public coming-out poses risks for an athlete. Changing one’s image
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can have unpredictable effects on the consumers’ acceptance of the brand.16 The major risks
for professional athletes are losing sponsorship, contracts and fan support. In other words, the stakes in elite sports are high, and consequences can be severe.
Khamis asserts, that for an individual who aspires to become famous, the challenge lies in reaching a larger audience and captivate it with uniqueness. Important factors in this context are calculating conditions of interplay between marketing, media and celebrity brand/ projected self-image. The relationship between marketing and media can be exemplified by advertising. Advertising transmitted on media channels generates financial profits. Celebrities serve as fuel for advertising campaigns. The stronger the image (or personal brand) of a celebrity, the higher the interest to the promoted product or activity. Fans consume the message posted by someone they like, follow or are curious about and, if successfully
presented, the message becomes associated with their idol. Hence, self-branding, content and interaction make a combination of factors required for building a strong influential image or brand.
Mainstream media can strengthen the image of a celebrity or ‘micro-celebrity’17in an
offline world by exposing it to even larger audience. When using social media, the user makes conscious choice whom to follow. This choice is based on personal preferences. However, when mass media introduces a “new face” or “hot topic”, this choice is already made, thus
providing an opportunity to gain popularity quicker, rather than exclusively relying on social media circles. This is why the differences between different types of media is important to note with regards to strategies that are most successful to highlight as issue transmitted by an icon or celebrity.
Role of Twitter for Athletes’ Public Image
Having established the importance of a strong online image, this thesis turns now to Twitter.
In focus is the use of Twitter by public figures and athletes, as discussed in academic research.
Twitter was established in 2006 as a micro-blogging service. Since its release, the number of registered users and the role of Twitter have increased drastically. From being defined as
16 For example, Michael Jackson’s image suffered greatly after media accused him in pedophilia, causing
him financial and legal consequences and great loss of fans. The same goes for the image of the professional boxer Mike Tyson, after him sustaining charges for domestic violence.
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social networking platform for sharing information, it has upgraded into a professional tool of creating economic, cultural and political influence across spheres.
Athletes can benefit from self-branding on Twitter in a professional context, which has been demonstrated by the growing body of academic publications on the subject (Satasuk & Yaoyuneyong, 2020) (Su, 2020). Twitter can be used for attracting sponsors, expanding the fandom, marketing an event or a competition. It can also help to communicate values to fans.
However, the extent of athletes’ usage of Twitter for self-promotion varies, as a number of academic publications show. This thesis looks closely at large-scale empirical studies, like the one by the Canadian professor of human kinetics, Ann Pegoraro (Pegoraro, 2010). She
collected data from 49 most followed athletes’ Twitter profiles, representative of the eight most popular types of sports (NFL, golf, soccer, tennis, NBA, NHL, motor sports and mixed martial arts). A total of 1,193 tweets posted within one week were analyzed and grouped by topics. Within soccer, the most frequent tweet posts were fan communication, closely followed by posts of personal character, pop culture and business-related tweets. On
individual level when looking at the sports celebrities’ tweets the variety of discussed topics had no correlation to the type of sports the celebrities represented. 18However, athletes do not
necessarily use Twitter for self-branding.
Thus, Pegoraro’s study demonstrated that the sport stars with the largest number of
followers on Twitter (2010) aimed to increase visibility by largely engaging in topics outside their professional career, frequently posting on themes of personal character and for self-promoting purposes (Pegoraro, 2010: 512). However, when looking at the culture within sports as entity, and what ‘soccer’ or ‘tennis’ tweets about daily in English, the results are different. The conclusion: on the personal level, it is the personal brand of a celebrity that influences the tweet content, rather than belonging to specific sports culture.
Another extensive study conducted by the scholars of sports and marketing studies Marion E. Hambrick and Jason M. Simmons (Hambrick, Simmons, & Greenhalgh, 2010) partly
18 For instance, Kerry Rhodes (NFL) had 42% of all posts as responses to fans, while Larry Fitzgerald (NFL)
65% and Shaquille O’Neal (NBA) 51%.
Juan Pablo Montoya (Motor sports) had over 91% tweets of personal life content, Jozy Altidore (soccer) 62%, Chad Ochocinco (NFL) 28%.
Business affairs were discussed in the smaller quantity of posts, but on individual level as much as 100% of tweets by Lamar Odom (NBA) and soccer player Freddy Adu (soccer)(38%) and tennis player Venus Williams 37% were business related.
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supports the findings of Pegoraro: as of 2010, professional athletes self-promoted on Twitter only to a limited extent. Having analyzed 1,962 posts, the scholars classified those as: diversion, information sharing, interactivity content, promotional and fandom. The largest category of tweets by athletes fell into the interactivity category (34%), namely for personal interaction with followers. The second largest category was diversion (28%), which related to topics outside the respective professional sport. 15% of the tweets were made of posts of the athletes discussing their clubs or other athletes within their own team or type of sport. Finally, only 5 % of tweets were posted in self-promotional purposes. Hambrick and Simmon’s study showed that interaction with fans and discussing sports were the main topics athletes tweeted about, while the self-marketing was greatly deprioritized.
A later study on attitudes of fans to athletes’ self-promotion on Twitter was conducted by sociologists Lebel & Danylchuk’s in 2014 (Lebel & Danylchuk, 2014). Their research enabled to draw a picture from the perspective of a follower, instead of, as in earlier studies, concentrating on the athlete. According to their data, 19 the fans exhibited biggest interest in
the athlete’s tweets about performance, fitness, and sport expertise, and showed only limited interest to other subjects, including the athletes’ personal life.
However, nowadays it can be hard to separate the personal and the professional, which is well illustrated on the example of tweets by Shimoyamada. She wisely presents her LGBT activism in relation to the Olympic Games, thus bridging her soccer achievements with personal and public engagement.
Despite the contradictory results produced by the already outdated studies introduced above, they all show how important the choice of content is for appealing to the audience. Furthermore, the studies illustrate, that even in the earlier stages of Twitter, celebrities recognized the medium’s potential of influencing the masses. This chapter illustrated how a personal brand can help to reach broader audience and capture the interest of users who are not necessarily engaged or interested in sports. The dynamics of online interaction were exemplified through large-scale empirical studies which also show that professional athletes use this social media for a variety of purposes.
19The scholars gathered data by questionnaire/ online survey among sport consumers for more details see:
