Sport psychology practitioner's perceptions and use of social media

Abstract

While sport psychologists have recently been encouraged to embrace digital technology and social media use in their practice, little is currently known about the associated benefits and challenges of adopting these recommendations. Published studies in other professions have suggested that engaging in social media use can be a double-edged sword, offering great communication benefits, but at the same time having the potential to impact upon work-life balance and general wellbeing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore practitioner social media use and perceptions, and to explore participant use of the Twitter social media platform.

Participants were initially 44 sport psychology practitioners who complete an online questionnaire, of which 28 also consented to their Twitter posts from the previous 30-days being analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis approach. Analysis produced two main categories: tweets and retweets. The tweets were composed of seven first order themes (media comments, advice and opinion, thoughts on events, self-promotion, knowledge dissemination, recommendations and activity), with the retweets composed of eight first order themes (media programming, events, sports fixtures, promotion, sport-specific content, news stories, opinions, and dissemination). Of particular importance was the perceived link between social media use and mental health, and lack of training and development.