Jonathan Cable, Glyn Mottershead







'Can I click it? Yes you can': Football journalism, Twitter and clickbait

This paper is part of an ongoing longitudinal analysis of the Twitter timelines of 15 major football media outlets from 2010 to 2017. It aims to demonstrate how over time the need for content has increased the scale and frequency of tweets, duplication of content and an increased focus on high profile football clubs, players and managers. The use of Twitter in this way is more directed at being a one-directional broadcasting medium, where content is increasingly homogenised - and where search engine optimisation and attractive headlines trump journalistic content. On the most basic of levels clickbait exists to generate traffic, increase site visitors and attract more advertising. As a result, this is reducing the quality of football journalism in a never-ending quest for easy content.

Keywords: clickbait, football journalism, social media, sport journalism, Twitter


References

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Note on the contributor

Jonathan Cable is a Lecturer in Sport Journalism at the University of Gloucestershire. He joined them from Cardiff University where he was a lecturer and researcher. He attained his PhD in Journalism Studies from Cardiff University in 2012. His research interests lie in football culture, protest, and sport media. His first book, Protest campaigns, media and political opportunities, has just been published.
Glyn Mottershead is a former regional newspaper journalist with more than 20 years in journalism and journalism training. He is co-director of the MSc in Computational and Data Journalism at Cardiff University and a co-author of the 21st century journalism handbook. His work involves teaching people that numbers and data sets are not anywhere near as scary as they might first appear.