Surveillance, Social Media, and the ‘Clean Athlete’

• In Event: The Online Construction of Crime and Deviance

Abstract

The rise of social media has significant implications for the study of contemporary surveillance practices. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current regulation of anti-doping in elite sport. With surveillance moving from a top-down to lateral approaches, athletes, regulators, sponsors and fans are increasingly able to manage their online presence while observing others. Drawing from interviews with sponsorship coordinators for major cycling teams and manufacturers, we examine the ways that sponsor expectations of athlete online presence informs and organizes athletes’ routine behaviors. We find that sponsors employ a variety of systematic and ad hoc techniques of surveillance of athletes’ online presence. Surveillance of athlete online presence has become a central component of sponsor activity and a key metric for evaluating athlete “performance.” In this way, social media surveillance practices function to organize both everyday routines and athletic performances.

Authors

• Ophir Sefiha, Western Carolina University

• Nancy Reichman, University of Denver