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Camille Mackedon

Professor Gonzalez

ENC 1102

30 March 2023

While creating my annotated bibliography for my research topic “The Impact of Fame

on Sports Performance” I gained an understanding of what the current “conversation” is all

about regarding my chosen topic. The current conversation is whether these particular things

such as social media, articles, news, etc, affect an athlete's overall sports performance. People

understand that being a collegiate, or professional athlete is already hard enough, but can the

media make it harder? That’s exactly what I want to find answers to and further research.

My strongest source would be “The New Window to Athletes’ soul- What Social

Media Tells Us About Athletes’ Performances” by Arne Gruettner, Min Vitisvorakarn,

Thiemo Wambsganss, Roman Rietsche, and Andrea Black. Not only does this source help

further my research topic, but it provides me with lots of valuable information. This source

actually gathered information from athletes right before a tennis match. They analyzed over

100,000 tweets and connected that to their match-day performances (Gruettner et al., 2020).

This source provides a thorough discussion and provides extremely strong evidence and

results. This article is really going to benefit my research and helped me better understand the

research conversation. This source connects to my other chosen sources in a few ways. This

source discusses the negative impacts social media can have on an athlete’s sports

performance, which is entirely what my other sources also discuss.

My second strongest source would most certainly be “An exploration of the

distractions inherent to social media use among athletes” by Michelle Hayes, Kevin Filo,

Andrea Geurin, and Caroline Riot. The authors view this topic as a contribution to an
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ongoing topic because there is a huge debate among sport stakeholder over what the

appropriate use of social media is among athletes. This source is very similar to my other

chosen sources in many views, but also provides an alternate view to this research

“conversation.” This source focuses on the positive and negative impacts of media on sports

performance but further discusses how it can be presented as a major distraction, including

positive and unwanted messages, branding pressures, and competitor content (Hayes et al.,

2020). This article also explains many ways that can help athletes overcome these

distractions, which can be very beneficial and help better an athlete's gameplay (Hayes et al.,

2020). This article pushes me to further research more ways that can maybe benefit an athlete

and help them not get affected or discouraged by social media and fame.

“The Impact Of Social Media On The Mental Health Of Student-Athletes” by Jessica

K. Brougham provides a different view of the ongoing “conversation” by focusing on the

mental health of athletes and how media can affect it. This source provided many useful

examples of athletes who receive hateful comments on social media which can not only affect

the way an athlete plays but more importantly affect that athlete's mental health. Many

athletes have social media platforms on Twitter such as Cade foster, an Alabama football

kicker, who would receive many, many hate comments not only directed to him but directed

to his family (Brougham, 2021). This example serves as an instance where the use of social

media among athletes can really affect their mental health. When adding this source and

discussing it in my annotated bibliography it made me think about how I shouldn't just focus

on the performance side of this research conversation but also the mental health side because

it's really important. The only reason I would say this source isn't as strong as my other ones

is because of a research gap I noticed. The sample size used in this research is smaller than

the other ones. Bigger sample sizes provide higher-quality results.

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In the article “Research on the relationship between excessive use of social media and

young athletes’ physical activity” the authors talk about the ambivalent effect social media

can have on the physical activity of young athletes. This article is different from my other

sources being that it focuses on not athletes as a whole but younger athletes and how their

relationship to social media can negatively affect them. It discusses the psychological

disorders you can develop which adds a different view to the research conversation. Not only

can social media affect an athlete's performance but it can cause horrible disorders to develop

(Hudimova et al., 2021). This source provides valuable and useful evidence based on results

gathered from google forms and statistical analysis done on athletes.

Lastly, in the article “Media Hype and Its Influence” Cynthia Frisby, and Wayne

Wanta bring exposure and discuss the stress that collegiate athletes go through that can come

from many different sources. They add to the ongoing research conversation by discovering

that media is the biggest influence on athletes. Their results showed that the media can

brutally critique collegiate athletes, and even make some athletes' personal lives feel invaded.

This source is similar to my other sources being it discusses the positive and negative aspects

of the use of media while being an athlete (Wanta & Frisby, 2018). After reading and

analysing this article, it really makes me want to further understand why media has such a

bad or good impact on athletes.

In conclusion, all my chosen sources contribute to my chosen topic and the current

“conversation” in various ways. Each source takes a different angle or approach and every

source with overall benefit my own research findings and point me in the right direction to

find answers. Some sources may be stronger and provide more useful answers, but all sources

are all very important when it comes to my topic: “The Impact of Fame on Sports

Performance.”
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Works Cited

Brougham, Jessica K. The Impact of Social Media on the Mental Health of

Student-Athletes. 2021,

https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2356&context=etd.

Frisby, Cynthia M., and Wayne Wanta. “Media Hype and Its Influence on Athletic

Performance.” Advances in Journalism and Communication, Scientific Research

Publishing, Inc, 1 Jan. 2018,

https://www.academia.edu/93514152/Media_Hype_and_Its_Influence_on_Athletic_Per

formance

Gruettner, A., Vitisvorakarn, M., Wambsganss, T., Rietsche, R., & Back, A. (2020).

(PDF) the new window to athletes' soul - what social media tells us ... Scholar

Space . Retrieved March 8, 2023, from

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336903215_The_New_Window_to_At

hletes'_Soul_-_What_Social_Media_Tells_Us_About_Athletes'_Performances

Hayes , M., Filo, K., Guerin, A., & Riot , C. (2020, February 16). An exploration of the

distractions inherent to social media use among athletes. Sport Management

Review. Retrieved March 8, 2023, from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1441352319303675

Hudimova, Alisar, et al. “Research on the Relationship between Excessive Use of

Social Media and ...” Http://Ekhsuir.kspu.edu, 2021,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357538541_Research_on_the_relation
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ship_between_excessive_use_of_social_media_and_young_athletes'_physical_a

ctivity