BEYOND THE COURT

For my final project I'd like to break down all the ways in which professional athletes use twitter as a tool for reaching fans, increasing their celebrity status, and especially the methods used to negotiate deals, trades, and other business agenda. My main focus will be towards the NBA, but with recent news I thought it would be relevant to address issues surrounding the NFL's pending lockout and negotiations. I found an article titled "NFL Players Take to Twitter in Vain to Fight Lockout." The article details the NFL's player’s union attempt to gain support through twitter. They used twitter as a way to set up a petition and gain support against team owners. The easy accessibility of twitter allowed many fans to proactively participate without having to put forth much effort. In my second article, "When Tweeting Athletes Turn into League Liabilities" there was more of an emphasis on the negative aspects that twitter has inflicted in the sports world. The article describes the relationship between twitter and athletes as an uncensored and over-looked media medium. Many players have been fined or suspended because of their tweets and some sports analyst believe that this is do to the fact that many athletes are less censored in their tweets in comparison to post game interviews or phone interviews; a product of twitters relative newness to the sports media world. I think it's interesting that twitter is shifting from an immediate update social media as to where your eating, what your doing, and etc., to a tool being used to generate interest and gain support for any particular issue.