Twitter’s diffusion in sports journalism: Role models, laggards and followers of the social media innovation

Abstract

The roles of sports journalists have been affected considerably by the influence of Twitter, but what is not known is how the social media application has been adopted across a range of sports newsrooms in different countries. Employing Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, this study examines how Twitter has been accepted or rejected on the sports desks of six broadsheet/quality news organisations in Australia, India and the United Kingdom. A mixed methods approach is employed, combining 36 in-depth interviews with a content analysis of 4103 print and online articles. This allows a comprehensive analysis of issues such as when and why sports journalists adopt this innovation, and how much Twitter-related content appears in the sports pages. Twitter adoption contains many benefits for individuals and their organisations, and the results from this study have implications for sports journalism in other nations at various stages of diffusion.