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Sports Influencers on Twitter. Analysis and Comparative Study of Track Cycling World Cups 2016 and 2018

Author

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  • José María Lamirán-Palomares

    (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Building 3B, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain)

  • Tomás Baviera

    (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Building 3B, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain)

  • Amparo Baviera-Puig

    (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Building 3B, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain)

Abstract

Social media has driven a sea change in the way users view and participate in sporting events through the media. In the digital medium, identifying the profiles with the greatest influential capacity is a key issue. Using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the aim of our research was to identify the most influential Twitter accounts in a major sporting event: The Track Cycling World Cups. The competitions from the years 2016 and 2018 were analysed, downloading all the tweets that included the official hashtag of each event and drawing up the graph of mentions and retweets. After reviewing the literature, activity, authority and popularity were defined as dimensions to assess influence, and two subcriteria were chosen as measures for each of them. Activity was measured by number of tweets and outdegree, authority by retweets and PageRank, and popularity by number of followers and indegree. By consulting experts following the AHP approach, various weights were assigned to these measures, resulting in authority as the most influential. With this weighting, the accounts with the greatest influence on Twitter turned out to be those related to organisation of the event and those of the athletes taking part.

Suggested Citation

  • José María Lamirán-Palomares & Tomás Baviera & Amparo Baviera-Puig, 2020. "Sports Influencers on Twitter. Analysis and Comparative Study of Track Cycling World Cups 2016 and 2018," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-23, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:10:p:169-:d:419818
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Constantino Stavros & Matthew D. Meng & Kate Westberg & Francis Farrelly, 2014. "Understanding fan motivation for interacting on social media," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 455-469, October.
    2. José M. Lamirán-Palomares & Tomás Baviera & Amparo Baviera-Puig, 2019. "Identifying Opinion Leaders on Twitter during Sporting Events: Lessons from a Case Study," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-18, May.
    3. Marta Hurst & Manuel Loureiro & Beatriz Valongo & Lorenzo Laporta & T. Pantelis Nikolaidis & José Afonso, 2016. "Systemic Mapping of High-Level Women’s Volleyball using Social Network Analysis: The Case of Serve (K0), Side-out (KI), Side-out Transition (KII) and Transition (KIII)," International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(2), pages 695-710, August.
    4. Stavros, Constantino & Meng, Matthew D. & Westberg, Kate & Farrelly, Francis, 2014. "Understanding fan motivation for interacting on social media," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 455-469.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kari L. J. Goold & Reynafe N. Aniga & Peter B. Gray, 2020. "Sports under Quarantine: A Case Study of Major League Baseball in 2020," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, December.
    2. Zhang, Min & Zhang, Dongxin & Zhang, Yin & Yeager, Kristin & Fields, Taylor N., 2023. "An exploratory study of Twitter metrics for measuring user influence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).

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