Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research

Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research

Tweeting With The Stars

Authors:

Jeffrey Gomez, Vinoth Saengaly, Michael Santora

Mentor:

Ruth Guthrie, Professor, California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Tweeting with the Stars
Twitter has become a popular social media platform where celebrities and athletes can communicate with their fans. Four of the top 10 Twitter topics for the week of September 25th (CNN) were about the infamous Seahawks vs. Green Bay Packer’s game, where substitute referees made a bad call, costing Green Bay the game. Even Barack Obama tweeted on this event, proving Twitter is a growing platform to communicate about various topics.
This research project investigated how popular celebrities and athletes, having millions of followers, engaging with their fans. Before Twitter was created, reaching out to their favorite athlete, musician, and actor/actress was very difficult. There was an address you could send a letter to, but the chance of the person opening the envelope, reading the letter and then replying was very small. Many fans have always been seeking a more personal interaction with their favorite stars. With the emergence of Twitter, this process has become vastly popular and widely used by the general public and stars themselves. Stars can now respond to fan mail immediately thanks to technology and the internet that is readily available at our fingertips.
This project looked at celebrity/fan interactions, categorizing interactions and developing a profile for the celebrity/fan and athlete/fan relationship. Following specific celebrities and athletes, data was collected to measure and analyze the amount of influence these ‘twitterholics’ have among their ‘tweeps.’ Inferences are drawn about how twitter might be used effectively in a classroom if a professor adopts a celebrity/athlete persona.


Presented by:

Jeffrey Gomez

Date:

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Poster:

97

Room:

Broome Library

Presentation Type:

Poster Presentation

Discipline:

Business
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