Out of Bounds: Exploring the Response to Professional Athletes’ Support for BLM on Twitter

Abstract

The purpose of this research project is to explore the ways that audiences respond to professional athletes using Twitter to support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Athletes and their relevant associations and leagues turned into powerful social media influencers of opinions and action that led to political and institutional turbulence and crisis. This research paper investigates how audiences choose to accept or reject the messages that professional athletes post on Twitter, and how this affects their support for the movement. For this end, I will be conducting semi-structured interviews to discover how audiences respond to professional athletes using Twitter to advocate for BLM. I expect to find out that most people will have a mixed opinion on this specific Twitter use, while others will have opposite or polarized opinions