Some universities pay companies to monitor athletes' social media
I thought that this would be of interest to the MGoBlog crowd, even if it is of the TLDR variety (apologies- this got long, but there's a lot of ground to cover here, I think). Essentially some universities (Oklahoma, North Carolina and Nebraska are mentioned) pay 3rd party companies $7000-10,000 per year to monitor student athletes' social media accounts. Also, some programs require that the athletes "friend" coaches (of course if Hoke had a Facebook account, he wouldn't have to mandate this- I mean, who wouldn't "friend" Hoke of their own volition?). This is in order to "look for things that could damage the school's brand and anything related to their eligibility" according to the chief executive of one of the companies.
Recently we've seen Roundtree commit a "NCAA violation" for tweeting to his friend Mike McCray (the article also mentions the UNC scandal which was prompted by a tweet), while by the same token social media has been credited with being a boon for recruiting. Social media is still such a very young and emerging field, both in terms of how it is changing athletics and life in general, specifically in this case in terms of how it crosses over into the realms of individual privacy rights and freedom of speech. There are a lot of grey areas to this, largely because we're in uncharted territory here. I know there's the #NoPolitics rule in effect here, but I think we could generate some interesting discussion here without crossing that line.
Personally, I fall on the privacy rights side of the debate, that student athletes should be unrestricted in their access/privacy with their social media, just like any other student, but that they have to realize that because they have a much higher profile than the average student, that with that comes a greater responsibility to use social media with caution, and that there may be consequences for their online, just as there would be for their offline, actions. I can understand having team rules address this- no tweeting during the season, the day of games, whatever- but having some kind of Big Brother watching over your social media shoulder is a bit much.
I'm curious what stance UM has in regards to social media and whether there should be a role for universities to monitor their athletes. It makes you wonder just how much of this is a slippery slope: would a university then monitor all social media for students, faculty and staff because of how they could potentially make the univerisity look?- to "damage the brand." Speaking of, I think MSU should look into hiring one of these companies to monitor their AD's tweets...except then we wouldn't be privy to his epic public failures.
March 31st, 2012 at 12:04 AM ^
in Illinois, and they wont let their athletes have a facebook or twitter account at all.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:25 AM ^
Give us your twitters, you might say something bad.
Oh hell, just stop fooling around and take care of things once and for all. Lock them up when they aren't needed in the Colosseum.
Sounds like money well spent.
I suppose it's better than doing nothing, but since these searches are predicated on creating a dictionary to flag certain words, it's going to be difficult to do, what with the creative spelling, slang, acronyms used in most of these messages that seem to change by the day.
Sorry, double post... haven't had caffeine yet.
I'm in the minority that don't use Twitter, so I may be wrong about this, but I was always under the impression that anyone can sign up to follow anyone else's twitter account. Therefore, it would be naive to have any expecation of privacy whatsoever... if anyone can read what you post. So I don't get your privacy point at all.
Similarly, I don't see a freedom of expression issue here. Freedom of expression does not guarantee expression without consequences.
And why do I get the feeling that this "company" is some guy sitting in his basement on his mom's computer?
March 31st, 2012 at 10:09 AM ^
You have the option to protect your tweets meaning that your tweets can only be viewed by those that you approve to follow you (like sending a friend request on Facebook if you're more familiar with that).
Protected profile of Tim Hardaway, Jr
Unprotected profile of Mike Martin
edit: Twitter says it better than I can -
"Only confirmed followers have access to @t_hard10's Tweets and complete profile. Click the "Follow" button to send a follow request."
March 31st, 2012 at 10:28 AM ^
With some Twitter accounts you can make them private, and only confirmed followers can see what you tweet
Edit: Too late on the reply
March 31st, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
1. The monitoring services in question can only catch stuff after it is posted on a social media site. I'm sort of confused about what good that does. Does it afford a chance to quickly remove offensive material? (What good does that do, after it is publisehd, say, and an erstwhile MGoBlog member repeats it in a Board post?) Is it just to get a faster start on damage control and mop-up? It doesn't seem to do much for "prevention." Or is it supposed to be a deterrent?
2. Does anybody really think that there is a legal expectation of privacy in publishing a written statement to 20 or 30 friends (your private followers), none of whom are your lawyer, your priest or your doctor?
3. The proposed Maryland legislation apparently talks about social media users having to relinquish their passwords. Is that technically necessary? Is it not enough to require users to "friend" the outside monitoring services, such that they will be able to see what is being posted, no matter what privacy settings are in place?
4. This one is hard to sugar coat; why the hell do athletes think that they can say whatever they want to on Twitter and not get called on it? I see it time and time again, wherein athletes complain that people shouldn't be reading their Twitter accounts, after they get caught saying something stupid, offensive or outlandish. What happened to the notions of accountability and standing behind your words? What is different about Twitter-speech?
March 31st, 2012 at 11:43 AM ^
Vocabulary dick time: "erstwhile" actually means "former", so an "erstwhile MGoBlog member" would be, say, McFarlin.
As for the rest of question 1, I would think it's like this: remember how UNC got in trouble, with all of it starting with a single tweet by Marvin Austin? The money they're paying - not actually that much - is highly worth the chance that you can get to a tweet like that before the media does. If it gets taken down and the only people that saw it were the monitoring company, then you just dodged a cannonball. And if someone does get to it first, at least you are aware of what's coming before the media asks you a question about the wild agent-paid parties that your players are attending in South Beach. As we've learned from Three and Out, just being aware of what's coming would ease the minds of the coaching staff and admin, even if you can't stop it. At least then you can formulate a response.
March 31st, 2012 at 11:36 AM ^
Personally, I fall on the privacy rights side of the debate, that student athletes should be unrestricted in their access/privacy with their social media,
Anyone demanding privacy on their Twitter account doesn't really understand how the whole Twitter thing works. It'd be like streaking, but hiring a whole police force to guard the perimeter, shut all doors and windows, and make sure nobody's looking. And it would require about the same amount of effort.
Yes, you can "protect" your tweets, but that is basically the thinnest possible veneer of privacy there is.
I do not believe that athletes have the same exact privacy rights as any other student. With privilege comes responsibility. Football players are the one-percenters of the student population....it is not asking too much to keep an eye on what they say on Twitter and Facebook and whatnot.