Tweet U: Understanding Student-Athlete Recruiting Through a Content Analysis of Tweeted College Football Offer Letters

• In Event: 35.079 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Five - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 35.079-1 - Digital Media, Manipulation, and Critical Thinking

Abstract

College football is a business and recruiting is the lifeblood of that business (Benedict & Keteyian, 2013). The recruitment of prospective student-athletes has impacts on future recruiting (Langelett, 2003), and overall winning (Bergman and Logan, 2016). This study provides a window into this process by conducting a visual and textual content analysis of college football scholarship offer letters. Using qualitative content-coding, the authors conducted a content analysis of 113 official communications between DI coaching staffs and prospective student-athletes obtained via publicly-shared tweets on Twitter. The findings are grounded and problematized through a lens signaling theory (Connelly et al., 2011) and viewbooks (Klassen, 2001). Preliminary analysis suggests a high occurrence of academic, ‘legalese’, and student-athlete character referenced in the letters.

Authors

• Derek A. Houston, Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville

• Siduri J. Haslerig, The University of Oklahoma

• Laura Bernhard, Stanford University