Ozzie Sport

Raw data used in this post can be found in GirlAFLSKFCTwitter.xls.

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View AFl, St Kilda, Teenaged Girl in a full screen map

The above map isn’t my favorite map. I can’t get geocommons to work to make a map like I want to. Sad. Anyway, the above map and the data below was collected on December 28 for @stkildafc and @afl. It was collected on December 29 for unnamed teenaged girl. (Her name is easy enough to find. I’m not going to spell it out.) Like other maps, I processed user followers using my location list to convert user inputted location to city/state/country. In a few cases, my screw ups. (Whoops! CITY, Western Australia, United States is obviously wrong.) Anyway, first some math to show differences between who is following the girl, St Kilda and the AFL.

As the map is rather bad, below is the table from hell showing the number of followers that each account has by city.

Related Posts:

• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• A new week, another St Kilda controversy
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 21)
• St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (complete)

Part 1: Nick Dal Santo, Part 2: Zac Dawson

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In writing up the St Kilda Nude Photo Controversy, it became obvious that the best way to approach this was to look at it from multiple perspective: Each athlete and the team. This paper thus has an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. I’m posting this as a draft as I finish each section. When it is eventually completed and fully edited, it will become a chapter in my dissertation. A copy of the complete, current draft of the paper can be found at StKildaChapter.pdf and the data for this paper beyond what is found in the paper and appendix can be found at StKildaData.xls. The paper includes footnotes that are not found in the html version and edits made to other sections since the html versions were first posted.

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Nick Riewoldt

Nick Riewoldt is one of the superstars of the AFL. In 2009, he broke up with long time girlfriend Stephanie McIntosh, a well known Australian actress and singer. (Stephanie McIntosh, 2010, December 22) A December 27, 2010 search on Google.com. au brought up 258,000 results when the search term “Nick Riewoldt” was used. A search for Riewoldt Kilda brought up 383,000 results. As of December 26, 2010, a Nick Riewoldt fan page on Facebook has over 4,000 fans. When he went down with an injury during the 2010 season, so important is he to that team that people wondered how the team would do with out him. He has the popularity, all around good looks and television presence that he regularly appeared as an analyst while convalescing. He is the current captain of the St Kilda Saints. Of the three players involved in this controversy, he had the most visibility prior to the start of the controversy. During the controversy, he was the player that the press chose to focus on above all others including Sam Gilbert, the player who took the pictures.

Riewoldt’s pictures was described by Hinch (2010, December 24) of 3AW News Talk radio:

Riewoldt says Gilbert snapped the unauthorised pic of him naked as he got out of bed. Sleeps in the nude like most people.
Look at the picture. As thousands of you have. What do you notice, apart from the fact that Riewoldt has waxed his pubic area. And, perhaps, that he is well-endowed.
Any normal man, sprung like that, would instinctively, inherently, try to cover his genitals. Riewold does not. His hands are on each side of his penis. As if posing.

The picture is not as bad as that of Nick Dal Santo, and is worse than of Zac Dawson.

Beyond the release of the picture featuring Riewoldt, the player has had greater visibility and involvement during the controversy because of his actions in response to the controversy and because of the alleged actions of his agent. His involvement in the situation has also been elevated because St Kilda drew the greatest amount of attention to the picture involving him, choosing to ignore the more sexually explicit picture of Nick Dal Santo that showed Dal Santo masturbating. Riewoldt held a press conference on December 21 to explain the pictures. A club spokesperson was quoted by Bryce Corbett (2010, December 22) on The Punch as saying: “Let’s not forget” that “he is the five-time best and fairest winner of this football club and was all-Australian captain last year”. During the press conference, Riewoldt told reporters “This photo was taken on a holiday by a teammate when I got out of bed over 12 months ago … by a teammate who I trust. And I asked that it would be deleted then and there and clearly wasn’t. And I’m bitterly disappointed at my teammate for that.” (Brodie, 2010, December 21) During Riewoldt’s press conference, St Kilda’s CEO jumped in to clarify that Riewoldt’s picture was taken from Sam Gilbert’s computer with out Riewoldt’s knowledge or consent. During Riewoldt’s press conference, aired live on some Australian television and radio stations, Riewoldt also affirmed his support for his team mate and the club: “Sam and I are both professionals, and we will both give everything we’ve got to the St Kilda football club and we will have a great working relationship going forward.” (Brodie, 2010, December 21) While this saga was going on, Riewoldt’s agent repeatedly referred to the 17-year-old girl at the heart of the situation was “that woman.” (Hinch, 2010, December 24) This type of phraseology aggravated a number of people observing the situation. (Hinch, 2010, December 24)

Riewoldt’s fame, Riewoldt’s full frontal nudity, Riewoldt’s press conference and St Kilda’s actions as they pertained to Riewoldt’s involvement are likely contributing factors in how the controversy played out. These variables provide a backdrop from which to explore how the controversy effected Riewoldt’s fan base, and by extension, St Kilda’s fan base. This section will explore demographic changes, community size changes, and comparative growth of pro-Riewoldt and anti-Riewoldt groups on Facebook and LiveJournal. Facebook was chosen over other social networks because it is Australia’s most popular social network and because the controversy started there. Outside of Twitter, it is probably the social network that is most involved in discussing the situation. Twitter’s lack of groups for people to join, lack of demographic data available on the site and the necessity of doing more of a textual analysis are why it is not explored more in this section. Beyond Facebook, LiveJournal is the only other site to be analyzed as it provides some demographic information about its users. The purpose section is to understand who Riewoldt’s fans are and how the controversy effected or did not effect demographic shifts.

Facebook provides demographic details about people who are interested in keywords that advertisers enter on their “What do you want to advertise?” page located at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ . On December 20, 26, 28 and 30, this page was checked, with various demographic data collected about people on Facebook who are interested in Nick Riewoldt. This data can be found in Appendix 13. Facebook’s data is pulled from people who list people on their profile, group membership and fan page likes. Given that, it is fair to assume that some people who are counted as Riewoldt fans may belong to anti-Riewoldt groups; the two types of fans cannot be separated. At times, numbers do not add up, such as the total number of Australian men and Australian women interested in Riewoldt may not add up to the total number of people in Australia interested in Riewoldt. This is because not everyone puts all their demographic details in their profile. The absence of this may skew actual results, but it is the authors belief, despite the lack of evidence, that non-inclusion of demographic data is consistent across all groups; consequently, the author draws conclusions based on that assumption.

The first group to be looked at is the international reception for Riewoldt. On December 20 and 30th, the total number of fans in New Zealand and the United States were checked. For New Zealand, on December 20, there were fewer than 20 fans of Riewoldts. This was unchanged by December 30, 2010. In the case of the United States, there were also fewer than 20 fans on December 20. By December 30, this number had changed to 100. Interest in Riewoldt had not grown in New Zealand, but it had grown in the United States, where the AFL has been trying to grow the game and where the local leagues have been semi-successful in using social media to help Australian expatriates play and to get Americans interested in playing the game. That Americans took an interest in Riewoldt may be a negative, because it could hurt the league’s ability to grow their international audience by making a joke of one their most visible players.

Across the whole of Australia, there were 11,880 people on Facebook who were interested in Riewoldt on December 20. By December 26, this number had gone up to 12,060. It went up again on December 28 to 12,180. By December 30, the number was again down to 11,880. The overall fluctuation was 300 total people, or 2.46% of totals fans based on the December 28 high. That number is not particularly significant. It is when Australian fans are broken down more that the results get more interesting.
Across Australian states, there was no change in the total number of people on Facebook interested in Riewoldt between December 20 and December 30 in the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, a 20 person increase in New South Wales, and an 80 person increase in South Australia. The two states that saw growth in interest in Riewoldt are very different in terms of their relationship with the AFL: One is a traditional AFL strong hold and one is not. That interest in Riewoldt was not higher in New South Wales is likely a good thing because the AFL is hoping to grow the game there, with an expansion team from the area set to start playing in the league in 2012.

Information about the total people interested in Riewoldt on Facebook was also collected on December 20 and December 30 for the following cities: Adelaide, Alice Springs, Broome, Cairns, Darwin, Devonport, Goulburn, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, Rockhampton, Townsville, Warwick. Of these cities, three saw a change in the number of people interested in Riewoldt: Adelaide and Melbourne both saw an increase of 20 people, and Hobart saw an increase of 40 people. The other cities remained unchanged. These three cities are all in AFL territory. Riewoldt originally being from the city may explain the increase in interest from people living in Hobart. (Nick Riewoldt, 2010, December 23)

The controversy appeared to create additional interest in Riewoldt amongst women. There were 5,400 female Australian fans on December 20, 5,520 on December 26, 5,420 fans on December 28 and 5,560 female Australian fans on December 30, 2010. This is an increase of 2.87% and, percentage wise, is slightly above the overall interest increase. The numbers for women interested in men remained unchanged. The numbers for women interested in women increased by 20. Thus, homosexual female fans were more likely to be interested in Riewoldt as a result of the controversy than their heterosexual counterparts. This may suggest that heterosexual female fans were more upset by the controversy than their lesbian counterparts because they did list Riewoldt as an interest at the same rate as the whole Australian population.

Interest in Riewoldt by Australian men on Facebook moved around: 6,340 on December 20th, 6,540 on December 26th, 6,540 on December 28th and 6,360 on December 30, 2010. Interest by men went up by 200, only to come down and be 20 more than on the day before the controversy. For homosexual men, the numbers did not change. For heterosexual men, the total number of people interested in Riewoldt increased by 20. This situation is an inverse of women and suggests that responses by gays, lesbians, heterosexual women and heterosexual men were different and that all had different concerns regarding various aspects of the controversy.

For college graduates in Australia, the total number of people interested in Riewoldt prior to the scandal on December 20th was 1,060, on December 26th when the scandal began to be ignored by the media was 1,140 and remained that amount of December 30th. For people in college, the number was 460 on December 20th and was 380 on December 26th and December 30th. The total number of people in high school interested in Riewoldt was consistent across all three dates: 1,080. During the scandal, Riewoldt gained fans who had finished college, lost fans who were in college and remained unchanged amongst high schoolers. Like orientation, this suggests that these three different peer groups had different concerns over the scandal. The loss of fans from the starting period amongst those in college is one of the only groups to experience loss amongst all populations and may signal institutional problems for St Kilda and the AFL in how its responded to the controversy. It suggests that this group of soon to be wage earners who the club and league will be dependent on in the future for revenue may dislike the tactics used. Losing this group could also be a problem because historically, the Australian rules has been depicted as the sport for the more educated and middle class while rugby league has been portrayed as the game for the more working class.

Another way at looking at Facebook demographic data for Riewoldt involves looking at the ages of fans. This data was gathered on December 20 and December 30. For the group between 20 and 29 years old, there was an increase of 140 fans over that period. For the group between 30 and 39, there was a decrease of forty fans over that period. For the group between 40 and 40, there was no change between December 20 and December 30. For the group between 50 and 59, there was an increase of sixty people interested in Riewoldt. For the group between 60 and 64, there was an increase of forty people. Older fans were more likely to be interested in Riewoldt in the period after the controversy, whereas people in their 30s were less likely to be interested in Riewoldt.
When all the Nick Riewoldt Facebook demographic data is examined together, it suggests that there are institutional problems for either the St Kilda Saints or the AFL based on who stopped being interested in Riewoldt or who became interested in Riewoldt. Heterosexual women did not respond but heterosexual men did. University students lost interest but college graduates gained interest. 30 to 39 year olds lost interest but the cohorts below and two levels above them gained interest.

Beyond Facebook’s demographic data, another way of understanding how a fan community responded is by looking at fan page and group expansion and contraction. This data was collected for Nick Riewoldt from December 20 to December 30th. The December 20th data was collected at 18:00 AEST and was found doing a search on Facebook for Nick Riewoldt. On that date, 202 total fan pages and groups were found. From December 21 to December 30th, the total number of members was recorded at 7:00 AEST using a script, facebook_followers.pl, found in Appendix 13. The results can be found in Appendix 13. The total number of groups was much higher than the total for both Dal Santo and Dawson, confirming the interest in and popularity of Riewoldt.

Of the 202 groups, at least one was subsequently deleted and two others moved from public to private. Thirteen saw a loss of between one and four members. Eighty-nine saw no growth or contraction in membership. Forty-six saw an increase of one or two followers. Five saw a growth of one-hundred members or more. Of the five that saw one hundred plus increases, two have names that suggest they are pro-Riewoldt: Nick Riewoldt and Nick riewoldt fans! The other three have names that imply a negative Riewoldt sentiment: I never cry. lol jk I’m Nick Riewoldt., I can kick a goal from 1 metre out lol jks im Nick Riewoldt, and Whats red, white and black and crys like a little girl?? NICK RIEWOLDT. Of the other groups in the top ten for most membership gains, four express a negative sentiment towards Reiwoldt in their names and one implies a positive sentiment. If the membership growth of the pro-groups and negative groups, the total is 813 and 953 respectively: Negative sentiment Riewoldt groups grew faster than positive sentiment groups.

Facebook users had a mixed reaction to Riewoldt related groups. A number of them joined pro groups and anti-groups. On the other hand, most groups did not see much membership change as a result of the controversy and very few saw losses. If liking or joining a fan page or group is seen as expressing allegiance or solidarity to a group or expressing interest in a specific, more people were willing to do that than the inverse of disassociating from groups by quitting them. That group willing to express an opinion is the important part here: A lot more people were willing to align themselves with some Riewoldt sentiment than they were to disassociate. The vocal support of both issues probably indicates larger problems for Riewoldt and his club: People are less content to disassociate and quietly leave but rather feel the need to be vocal in their position. This means that the issue likely will have a longer shelf life than if people had chosen to remain quiet or disassociate.

LiveJournal is a popular Australian blogging site. Its characteristics are discussed more in the section about Nick Dal Santo. One of LiveJournal’s features is that it allows people to list interests, and many people list very athletes. On December 20 and December 30th, the total number of people interested in Nick Riewoldt was checked. There was no change in totals or composition of the six people who listed Riewoldt as an interest. Of the six who listed as an interest, two listed Nick Dal Santo as an interest, with a crossover of 33%. Of the six who listed Riewoldt as an interest on LiveJournal, only one has updated since the scandal broke and in her recent updates, she has not mentioned the situation. Location wise, only two of the six list a city of residence and both are from Melbourne. Five of the six list a country of residence and all of those are from Australia. Four of the six list a year of birth: 1983, 1989, 1990 and 1990. This puts the mean year of birth at 1988 and the mean year of birth at 1989. The demographic composition puts them into a group of colleged-aged fans who are likely ideal fans in terms of who the AFL is trying to cater to.

Facebook showed a small demographic shift in terms of who was interested in Nick Riewoldt: Fans were gained for people between 50 and 64 years of age and between 20 to 29 years of age. Both men and women became fans of Riewoldt in the period after the controversy, with relatively big gains for lesbian women and heterosexual men. Riewoldt also gained fans amongst college graduates on Facebook. Interest increased around Hobart, Riewoldt’s home town. While those groups gained, Riewoldt lost fans in college and fans whom were between the ages of 30 and 39. These shifts occurred while people were active in joining groups and fan pages in support or condemnation of Nick Riewoldt. Over on LiveJournal, Riewoldt’s fans are in their early 20s and their stated interest in the athlete did not change as a result of the controversy but neither did it lead them to state a position, unlike their peers on Facebook. If LiveJournal is ignored, the Riewoldt data suggests that this is a controversy that effected his fanbase and will have long lasting consequences, as people did not remain silent, instead choosing to take sides for him or against him.

References

• Brodie, W. (2010, December 21). Nick Riewoldt Nude Photo Scandal: St Kilda ‘Bubble’ Pierced. The Sydney Morning Herald. Newspaper. Retrieved December 29, 2010, from http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/naked-photos-pierce-the-bubble-20101221-193o1.html

• Corbett, B. (2010, December 22). Ignoring the homoerotic elephant in the locker room. The Punch. Retrieved December 29, 2010, from http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/ignoring-the-homoerotic-elephant-in-the-locker-room/

• Hinch, D. (2010, December 24). Hinch delves deeper into scandal. 3AW693 News Talk. Radio. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/blog-with-derryn-hinch/hinch-delves-deeper-into-scandal/20101224-196xc.html

• Nick Riewoldt. (2010, December 23). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:33, December 30, 2010, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nick_Riewoldt&oldid=403871277

• Stephanie McIntosh. (2010, December 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:41, December 27, 2010, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephanie_McIntosh&oldid=403731082

• What do you want to advertise? (2010, December 27). Facebook. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/

Related Posts:

• St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (complete)
• St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (part 1) : Nick Dal Santo
• Which AFL team do Canberrans support in the Grand Final?
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom

Part 1: Nick Dal Santo

In writing up the St Kilda Nude Photo Controversy, it became obvious that the best way to approach this was to look at it from multiple perspective: Each athlete and the team. This paper thus has an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. I’m posting this as a draft as I finish each section. When it is eventually completed and fully edited, it will become a chapter in my dissertation. A copy of the complete, current draft of the paper can be found at StKildaChapter.pdf and the data for this paper beyond what is found in the paper and appendix can be found at StKildaData.xls. The paper includes footnotes that are not found in the html version. Some modifications to the introduction have been made since part 1 was posted. These are reflected in the PDF and not in the post.

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Zac Dawson
Zac Dawson joined St Kilda in 2009, after playing for the Hawthorn Hawks 2005 to 2006, and Box Hill in the VFL during the 2007 and 2009 seasons. (Zac Dawson, 2010, December 20) In 2010, he played 20 games for St Kilda and played in all three Grand Finals matches that year for the team. (Zac Dawson, 2010, December 20) A December 27, 2010 search on Google.com. au for “Zac Dawson” brought up 212,000 results. Unlike the other two players involved in this controversy, he is the only one who has a Twitter account, @zacd_6. He is probably the least well known of the players involved in this controversy.

Of the three players who were visible in the photographs, Dawson’s picture is probably the least problematic. Hinch (2010, December 24) described the picture and scene:

Zac Dawson, who has been kept under the radar, is invading Riewoldt’s space, grinning (a little self-consciously) at the snapper and holding what looks like a blue condom wrapper only centimetres from his skipper’s kipper.

This section will look examine the effect that the controversy had on Zac Dawson’s Twitter followers, looking at growth and to see if the controversy changed the profile of who followed him. Beyond that, this section will look at the growth of Facebook fan pages featuring Dawson. The purpose of doing this is to understand how Australian sport fans on Twitter respond when a major athlete if involved in a negative controversy as Dawson is one of several Australian athletes on Twitter to have gotten negative attention as a result of controversy in the past four months. Athlete accessibility on Twitter is seen as a positive by many fans as it removes the media barrier. On the other hand, athlete accessibility is often seen as a negative by clubs and leagues as it can cause public relations and sponsorship issues for them. The other purpose is to understand growth and contractions patterns in response to controversy: Do peripheral players see similar growth or contraction as major players who have a higher profile? How will this situation effect Dawson’s personal brand and how may Dawson’s involvement in this scandal impact St Kilda?

Part of the backdrop to the St Kilda nude photo controversy was the level of fame that the teenaged girl at the heart of the controversy has achieved, with one of those levels of fame being measured by the total number of followers that the girl has accrued on Twitter. This number topped 12,000 by December 25, 2010. (Munro, 2010, December 26) In terms of Australian sport figures and organizations on Twitter, this puts her close to the Australian Open tennis event, Wendell Sailor of the St. George Illawarra Dragons, the Australian triathlete Daniel MacPherson, and the Rugby World Cup. Of roughly 900 Australian sport related Twitter accounts identified, the teenaged girl’s account would rank in the top 20. As the media controversy went on, she continued to update about her feelings and what her actions would be.

It is against the backdrop of the teenaged girl’s action that Zac Dawson’s Twitter account needs to be viewed. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of Dawson’s Twitter updates around the period that the controversy took place.

Figure 2. December 29, 2010 Screenshot of Zac Dawson’s Twitter Profile.

Dawson updated and his December 23 tweet could be seen as referencing the ongoing controversy. That he updates, even if irregularly, probably gave navel gazers, fans and haters a reason to follow him while the story continued. For the media, it gave them another possible outlet to get details regarding the story and Dawson’s involvement in it and reaction to it.

The first way that the effect on the controversy as it pertains to Zac Dawson’s Twitter account will be looked at is by tracking his follower growth compared to St Kilda’s official account, St Kilda fansites and other St Kilda players not involved in the controversy. This data can be found in Table 1 for the period between December 15 and December 26, 2010.

Table 1
St Kilda Twitter Account Follower Totals

In the period leading up to the controversy, December 15 to December 20, Dawson saw an increase of 11 total followers. In the period from when the story broke on the 20th until most of the media attention faded on the 26th, Dawson saw an increase of 88 followers. The slope for follower acquisition during the period from the December 15 to December 20 is 2.71. The slope for the period during the controversy between December 21 and December 26 is 12.71. The controversy clearly gave Dawson a bump in the total number of followers. Jason Gram’s slope was 24.2 and 42.2 over the same periods respectively. He has been on Twitter for a shorter period of time than Dawson and has been updating more frequently. Dawson’s slope during the controversy was six times amount of the period preceding it. In comparison, Gram’s slope was only twice that during the controversy. Steven Baker, not implicated in the scandal, had a slope of 6.6 prior to and 33.11 during. His numbers closely resemble that of Dawson’s. Nick Brown and Rob Eddy had slopes of 3.70 and 2.60 before, and 5.77 and 9.03 during it. Thus, of the Saints players identified on Twitter, Zac Dawson’s slope really stands out when compared to his teammates. His total number of new followers also stands out, with only two of the other four having beaten him: Baker and Gram. Most signs point to people having followed Dawson in response to the controversy.

Assuming that the data is right, that Zac Dawson saw an increase in followers as a result of the controversy, the next question worth asking is who is now following him and how did the population following him change from the population that followed him prior to the controversy? On November 18, December 18 and December 28, the ozfollowers.pl script found in Appendix 5 was run. This script got a list of all the followers for Zac Dawson, recorded the total number of followers, follows, lists they have. It also recorded their profile description, language, timezone and user inputted location. The user inputted location was run against an 80,000 plus long list of user created locations and standard names found in Appendix 4. The purpose of this list is to identify what city, state and country Dawson’s followers are from. If a person’s location was unknown or was left blank, an attempt was made to identify their state or country location using their time zone information. For November 18, a city was identified for 578 of Dawson’s 1,223 followers. For December 18, a city was identified for 598 of 1,300 followers. For December 28, a city was identified for 655 of Dawson’s 1,396 followers. After this data was gathered, the total number of followers per city was tabulated. The complete list of city totals can be found in Appendix 13. Table 2 shows the cities that had a follower total change between December 18 and December 28.

Table 2
Twitter Follower by City Location Difference

The difference in Twitter follower by locations does not show any strong patterns of unfollowing. The two cities that saw negative growth were both in Victoria, which could be seen as potentially problematic in that Victoria and the Melbourne suburbs are traditional strongholds for the AFL. If St Kilda has a similar pattern of contraction around the area, then this could signal larger problems that Dawson’s data suggests. Dawson’s growth does suggest national and international interest in the controversy: Dawson gained followers in all states, not including the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory. Dawson also picked up followers from the United Kingdom and the United States. If Dawson’s involvement is what these followers know of the Australian game, it might hinder the growth of the game internationally.

Twitter follower data can also be determined by state, where there are fewer unknown locations. In the case of the November 18 data, state location was available for 728 followers, 764 for December 18, and 820 for December 28. The same methodology for cities was used to get this information for states. In some ways, this data is less useful because it can mask unfollows that take place. Still, it is worth looking at in order to see how the story was received nationally and internationally in terms of gaining or losing followers across a wider population. The complete list of states can be found in Appendix 13. States that saw a gain or loss can be found in Table 3.

Table 3
Twitter Follower by State Difference

Here again it is apparent that the controversy was picked up nationally and internationally. Most of the additional follows were in Victoria, the AFL stronghold. All states saw an increase in the total number of followers, save the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. These patterns largely support the conclusions based on the city data.

Beyond the difference in location, it is worth looking at how Dawson’s followers use Twitter and if there was a difference in the type of Twitter user follow Dawson before the controversy and after the story was mostly being ignored by the media. The mean, median and mode was calculated for followers, friends, listed and status updates for all of Dawson’s followers on November 18, December 18 and December 28. This data can be found in Table 4.

Table 4
Zac Dawson Twitter Followers Stats

Between the period before the start of the controversy and the period after the controversy was largely over, there was a small but significant change in the type of person following Zac Dawson on Twitter. New followers had fewer people they followed, updated less often, appeared on fewer lists and had fewer friends. In social media terms, these are the followers people want: Messages sent on out by those they follow will more likely be read than if the people followed more accounts. Dawson’s new followers are likely the kind that Dawson’s sponsors and St Kilda want as these new followers are going to read what he says. The problem though is if these people are following to see how Dawson responds to the controversy; people looking for negative brand message are not good for Dawson’s or St Kilda’s brand.

The controversy appeared to result in a growth of Twitter followers for Zac Dawson. These followers were located across Australia and internationally. They followed fewer people and updated less often. While these numbers could be construed as positive, against the backdrop of the teenaged girl’s total followers, the numbers suggest navel gazing behavior, which could have long term negative consequences for Dawson’s personal brand and St Kilda’s goodwill amongst fans in the AFL.
Early on the morning of December 21, before the controversy had fully gained steam, a search was done on Facebook to identify Facebook groups featuring Zac Dawson. Thirteen groups were found. From December 21 to December 28, each group had the total membership checked at 7:00 AEST using a script, facebook_followers.pl, found in Appendix 13. The results for the full period are available in Appendix 13. An abbreviated version of the results for the period between December 21 to December 25 are found in Table 5. Groups that had no change were removed.

Table 5
Zac Dawson Facebook Groups

Of the thirteen groups, three lost members, one switched from public membership to closed membership and another group added 188 members. The latter group, because of the consistent membership totals at 250, was likely done as a result of one person using multiple accounts to get to a specific number. This assumption is made because the total got to 250 and then did not change over the course of a week.

The Facebook contraction indicates that Dawson’s involvement in the controversy was perceived as slightly unfavorable by some of his supporters, who left and thus disassociated themselves from him. Dawson did not see any benefit as a result of increased interest on fan pages and groups that were created by fans. His fan base on Facebook groups was small and overall, was largely not impacted by the event.

As a peripheral player in this controversy, Zac Dawson did not generate a large amount of interest. He only got 88 new followers on Twitter in response to the controversy. The location of his follower growth was spread across the country. The followers that Dawson got on Twitter followed fewer people and updated less often. There was some contraction of Dawson’s fanbase on Facebook. As a non-famous athlete not being focused on as much by the media, Dawson appeared to get more of a free ride by fans that continued on in their lack of interest of him. For other less famous athletes involved in similar situations, this may be good news as they are likely to avoid similar culpability. Dawson’s presence on Twitter did not appear to aggravate the situation, which supports the idea that athlete accessibility is good. Beyond that, there are some minor indicators that Dawson’s involvement may hurt his personal brand and that it may have long term negative consequences for St Kilda’s brand.

Related Posts:

• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• A new week, another St Kilda controversy
• St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (complete)
• Which AFL team do Canberrans support in the Grand Final?

In writing up the St Kilda Nude Photo Controversy, it became obvious that the best way to approach this was to look at it from multiple perspective: Each athlete and the team. This paper thus has an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. I’m posting this as a draft as I finish each section. When it is completed, as a draft and unedited, I will post it as a PDF. That is where footnotes will become visible.

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Figure 1. December 21, 2010, Herald Sun front page.

“Saints’ Naked Fury” screamed a December 21, 2010 headline on the front page of the Herald Sun. “Defiant teenage girl votes to publish more photos” said a smaller headline. Anthony Dowsley’s front page story contained a picture of three St Kilda footballers: Nick Riewoldt, Zac Dawson and Nick Dal Santo. (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) The front-page story sensationalized a situation that had been brewing for several months and had culminated in the release of nude pictures of the three aforementioned players on Facebook.

The story started back in May 2010, when an unnamed teenaged girl alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by two unnamed St Kilda players following a school football clinic at her school. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) (Parker, 2010, May 26) The girl also claimed that she had become pregnant by one of these two players. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) The AFL investigated the claim and determined that the girl did not meet the players at a school function. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) Rather, she was introduced to the players following a March 27 game versus the Sydney Swans. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) The St Kilda Saints alleged that the girl had misrepresented her age to the players, both in person and on Facebook. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) After an investigation by the Victorian police, they too decided not to take any action in the case. (Robinson, & Warner, 2010, May 26) The girl later miscarried. (Munro, 2010, December 26)

The lack of the players being named an issue that some people picked up on. (Parker, 2010, May 26) It would later be a factor when the story re-emerged with a new twist. In the meantime, the May 2010 pregnancy story had largely disappeared by the end of June.

In mid-December, the teenaged girl again made news when the Herald Sun reported that she had slept with a police officer who was investigating her claims of abuse. (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) Around December 18 or December 19, the unnamed now 17 year teenaged girl posted nude pictures of those three players to her Facebook wall and Twitter stream. (Butler & Millar, 2010, December 22) The pictures were allegedly posted after the girl tried and failed to sell them to Riewoldt’s agent for $20,000 (Butler & Millar, 2010, December 22) but were also allegedly posted as payback for the Herald Sun article. (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) The girl alleged that she took the pictures when she was in a hotel room with the players. The AFL and Saints allege that she stole the pictures from the computer of a St Kilda player, Sam Gilbert. (Butler & Millar, 2010, December 22) (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) Newspapers such as the Herald Sun interviewed the girl and asked her why she published them. (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) The girl complained that she had been abused by the AFL and the Saints in their treatment of her during the earlier story. She felt powerless to take them on. By posting the pictures, she felt she could get her revenge on the organization that had tormented her. (Dowsley, 2010, December 21) By December 20, the Saints had been granted a restraining order, preventing the girl from publishing any more of the nude pictures she allegedly had in her possession. (Butler & Millar, 2010, December 22) The club promised to prevent her from profiting off any from the story, saying they would take legal action to ensure it. (Butler & Millar, 2010, December 22) By December 24, according to Twitter reports and ABC News, the girl had announced she would not post any more pictures. (ABC News, 2010, December 24) The girl went home to Queensland for the holidays, saying she had stopped posting pictures because she felt like she had victimized the players and felt guilty. (Munro, 2010, December 26) The story was largely over by December 25.

The controversy largely took place over six days: December 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25. Attention then largely disappeared. The media covered the story extensively on television, on the radio and in print. The story was the second nude photo scandal to happen in Australia in less than two months. There was a lot of social media buzz on Twitter and Facebook about the controversy, helped the fact that the story broke there and because the girl starting it had over 12,000 followers on Twitter. (Munro, 2010, December 26)

The nude photo scandal is a recurring one in Australian sport. This one is a bit unique in that it involved three players having nude photos of them released, and the league and club’s legal response in support of their players. It is also unique because of the backstory involved, and because of the revenge factor where the girl who released the pictures did so to get back, not at players, but at the club. The implications are thus possibly a bit further reaching in terms of a club’s fanbase than the just the player.

Because of the complexities of this controversy, this chapter is broken up in four sections. The first will look at the impact of the controversy on the demographics of Zac Dawson’s Twitter followers and the growth of fan pages about him on Facebook. The second section will look at how the controversy played out with Nick Rieowoldt’s fans on Facebook. The third section will look at the Nick Dal Santo on smaller social networks followers and the growth of fan pages about him on Facebook. The last section will compare St Kilda to other teams in the AFL to see if the controversy impacted the club on Alexa, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia. The purpose of this is to provide a comprehensive overview on how the situation impacted the four major players in the controversy: Zac Dawson, Nick Riewoldt, Nick Dal Santo and the St Kilda Saints.

Nick Dal Santo

Nick Dal Santo was drafted by St Kilda at the start of his career and has been an important component to the team since his 2004 season. (Nick Dal Santo, 2010, December 25). A December 27, 2010 search on Google.com. au for “Nick Dal Santo” brought up 325,000 results. As of December 28, 2010, he had 3,660 fans on Facebook. Of the three players, he is the second most popular.

Of the players photographed, Dal Santo’s picture is probably the worst. Hinch (2010, December 24) described the picture and scene:

Then there’s the other photo of Dal Santo, presumably taken by ‘artist’ Gilbert. Apparently the Bill Henson of the footy set. The club hasn’t even attempted to explain this one.

Dal Santo is captured, with his penis exposed, playing with himself.

This section will look at the size of the fan community for Nick Dal Santo on Facebook and on a selection of other, smaller social networks and websites to see if the controversy resulted in a response amongst them. Smaller sites are important because they give an idea as to the wider world’s awareness of Australian sport events and insight into how niche communities view them. Sites referenced include 43 Things, Alexa, bebo, BlackPlanet, blogger, Care2, delicious, digg.com.au, ebay, Facebook and LiveJournal.

43 Things is a goal setting site. As of December 28, 2010, Alexa ranks the site as the 2,833 most popular in Australia. People use the site to goals related to athletes, including ones like “Meet Michael Jordan” and “See Lebron James play.” On December 21, 26 and 28, the author search 43 Things for the phrase “Dal Santo.” There were no search results. On December 28, in order to verify that there was nothing related to Dal Santo on 43 Things, a Google search was done using the phrase: “Dal Santo” site:43things.com. This too resulted in zero results. Nick Dal Santo was not popular enough to rate a goal before the event; his involvement did not rate highly enough for 43 Things’s users to create one.

When the controversy first happened, Google was searched in an attempt to identify Nick Dal Santo fansites or a personal site. In addition, the AFL website and Wikipedia were both checked. No fansites were found. If they had been found, it would have been possible to try to get data from Alexa regarding fansite rank.

Bebo is a social network owned by AOL. As of December 28, 2010, Alexa ranks it as the 874th most popular in Australia and 159th most popular in New Zealand. The Australian sport community on bebo has become mostly inactive, despite a high point where groups like the Canberra Raiders dance squad had their official internet presence on it. Early on December 21, 26 and 28, Bebo was searched for Nick Dal Santo. On both dates, 2 people and 1 group were found. The group was a general group dedicated to the St Kilda Saints. The two people were both female and one listed her age as 18. The picture of Nick Dal Santo masturbating did not activate the bebo community; no one decided to add or remove him as an interest in response.

BlackPlanet is a niche social networked geared towards African Americans and other non-Asian, non-Caucasian minorities. The size of the Australian sport community on the site is small but growing, with one person having listed the NRL as an interest early in 2010 and four people having listed it as an interest by early December 2010, zero people had listed the AFL as an interest and by December four people had. BlackPlanet’s user profile search was used on December 21, 26 and 28th to search for people who listed Nick Dal Santo as an interest. On all three dates, the total results was zero. BlackPlanet’s community was not activated in such a way as to add Nick Dal Santo as an interest.

Blogger is a popular blogging service run by Google. According to Alexa on December 28, it is the ninth most popular site in Australia. Users can list their interests on their profile page and a number of Australians have done that in relation to their favorite leagues, clubs and athletes. On December 20, 21, 26 and 28, a profile search for Nick Dal Santo was conducted. On all four occasions, no one was found to have listed him as an interest. The controversy did not activate any of his fans, new or old, to list him as an interest.

Care2 is a social networked aimed at people who want to do good and help make the world a better place. It offers its members the ability to blog, to upload pictures, to create petitions, to personalize their profiles, to join groups, and to create and send e-cards. Nick Dal Santo was searched for on December 20 and December 26, 2010. On both occasions, there were zero search results across all content types. This means no one blogged about the situation, nor created a petition to express an opinion regarding Dal Santo’s actions. This suggests that the commnity either was not aware or did not care.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site. In December 2010, Yahoo announced they were looking for a buyer for the site and if they could not find one, they were planning to close it. This decision was made despite the fact that Alexa ranked the site as one of the top 250 sites world wide in December. There has been an active Australian sport community on the site since at least 2008, if not earlier. As of December 28, St Kilda’s website has been bookmarked by 35 different users. On December 23, 26 and 2, Nick Dal Santo was searched for. On all three days, the search result was 1 bookmark. This bookmark did was posted prior to October 2009, was bookmarked by one individual and did not reference the controversy. No one was interested enough to add a bookmark about the controversy. The lack of new links may partly be a result of Yahoo’s decision to possibly close the site, but is also probably a result of lack of interest as witnessed by behavior on other sites.

Digg is a social news site. Users can submit news stories that other users can vote up or down. As of December 28, 2010, Alex ranked it as the 109th most popular site in Australia. The site is important enough that the AFL have an official account, where they submit their own news stories. The dig page about the link includes how many diggs the link has, the date the link was submitted and allows people to make comments on the link. A search was done for “Nick Dal Santo” on December 28, 2010. There were 11 search results. Of these, two were submitted in the period after the controversy broke. Figure 2 shows a screencap of these two submissions.

Figure 2. Screencap of Nick Dal Santo related Digg submissions.

One article was dugg three times and one article was dugg once. Most of the site looked at so far are sites where people would list Dal Santo if they were a fan of his or where they would join a group to express displeasure regarding his actions. Digg is different and caters to an audience of people looking for news. Thus, it is less surprising that people referenced him here, where they might not otherwise. Despite the submissions though, no one was interested enough in the topic on the site to comment on the two submissions.

ebay.com.au is a popular Australian auction site. As of December 28, 2010, there are over 500 items on sale or auction related to the St Kilda Saints. A search was run for Nick Dal Santo on December 23, 26 and 28. There were 49, 53 and 51 results respectively. It is hard to interpret what this means as most auctions last one week. Auctions ending on the 23 would have been listed the 16th, four days before the start of the controversy. Items ending on the 28th would have been listed on the 21, the day the controversy started. This monitoring period included a holiday, which could have complicated item pick up and sales. This could have discouraged people from listing items, despite the potential interest in Dal Santo items as a result of the controversy. In this case, no conclusion can be made regarding what the number of listings mean in terms of how it relates to the controversy.

Around 6:00 AEST on December 21, a search was done on Facebook to identify Facebook groups and pages that mentioned Nick Dal Santo. Ten groups and pages were found. From December 21 to December 28, each group had the total membership checked at 7:00 AEST using a script, facebook_followers.pl, found in Appendix 13. The results for the full period are available in Appendix 13. An abbreviated version of the results for the period between December 21 to December 25 are found in Table 2. Groups and fan pages that had no change were removed.

Table 2
Nick Dal Santo Facebook Group and Fan Pages

Like Zac Dawson, the scandal did not have much of an effect on the size of Facebook groups and fan pages featuring Nick Dal Santo. The one group that saw growth was likely created in response to the situation and only gained four members, topping off at six. That membership increase is hardly notable. Thus, while the pictures of Nick Dal Santo were the most problematic, he was not punished by having the fan base for him on Facebook contract significantly.

LiveJournal is a popular blogging service with elements of social networking involved like the ability to add friends, join communities and customize a user profile. As of December 28, 2010, Alexa ranks the site as the 103rd most popular site in Australia. The site has a number of Australian sport communities, including ones for the Socceroos, Brisbane Lions, Collingwood Magpies, NRL and Tim Cahill. A profile search was done on December 20 and 28 for Nick Dal Santo. The total result was 5 on both dates. Of these five accounts, only one had updated since the controversy broke and that user did not post a public entry referencing it. Of the five people who listed him as an interest, three listed their hometown as Melbourne, one listed their hometown as Canberra and one did not list a hometown. All five listed their year of birth; the group’s mean year of birth was 1988.8, the median year of birth was 1989 and the range was 1986 to 1991. Amongst that demographic of almost 20-something fans, none were so outraged by the situation that they felt compelled to remove Dal Santo as an interest or to update their LiveJournal about him. Like other networks, there was no real activity.

The examination of smaller networks show that Nick Dal Santo does not have a large fan base. The fan base that he did have was not motivated to disassociate from the athlete as a result of the controversy. On sites that allowed picture uploading like Care 2, no one uploaded images related to Dal Santo. Of the sites with blogging components like Care 2 and LiveJournal, no one updated to reference the situation. Ebay results were too ambigious to draw a conclusion about. Digg and Facebook were the two sites that saw the largest amount of activity around the time of the controversy, and both did reference it. The level of activity was small, and in the case of digg, did not necessarily get referenced by fans or haters of the player and league. On the whole, niche communities, smaller social networks and websites did not react to Nick Dal Santo’s involvement in this latest AFL controversy.

References
ABC News. (2010, December 24). Girl agrees to destroy nude player photos. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/24/3101378.htm?section=justin
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). 43things.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/43things.com
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). Bebo.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Bebo.com
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). Blogger.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Blogger.com
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). Delicious.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ Delicious.com
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). Digg.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ Digg.com
Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 28). LiveJournal.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/LiveJournal.com
Butler, B., & Millar, P. (2010, December 22). Teen stole nude AFL pictures then asked for $20,000, court told. The Sydney Morning Herald. Newspaper. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/teen-stole-nude-afl-pictures-then-asked-for-20000-court-told-20101221-194hp.html
Dowsley, A. (2010, December 21) I want my revenge. Herald Sun. 7. Melbourne.
Dowsley, A. (2010, December 21) Saints’ naked fury. Herald Sun. 1. Melbourne.
Hinch, D. (2010, December 24). Hinch delves deeper into scandal. 3AW693 News Talk. Radio. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/blog-with-derryn-hinch/hinch-delves-deeper-into-scandal/20101224-196xc.html
Munro, P. (2010, December 26). It was awful: a girl’s own misadventure. The Sydney Morning Herald. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/it-was-awful-a-girls-own-misadventure-20101225-197ky.html
Nick Dal Santo. (2010, December 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:40, December 27, 2010, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nick_Dal_Santo&oldid=404171323
Parker, D. (2010, May 26). Yahoo Seven, St Kilda footballers, sex with sixteen year olds, and memories of David Campbell … loon pond. Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://loonpond.blogspot.com/2010/05/yahoo-seven-st-kilda-footballers-sex.html
Robinson, M., & Warner, M. (2010, May 26). AFL investigation clears St Kilda players in sex scandal. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 27, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teenager-claims-she-is-pregnant-after-sex-with-st-kilda-stars/story-e6frf9jf-1225871304162
Stephanie McIntosh. (2010, December 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:41, December 27, 2010, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephanie_McIntosh&oldid=403731082
Zac Dawson. (2010, December 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:09, December 27, 2010, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zac_Dawson&oldid=403345810

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My dissertation writing makes me a mass of total insecurities. Writing about social media is worse because the topic seems so simplistic that anyone can understand it. I also want to make sure that everyone can understand it because if it gets too highly technical, I worry that industry people and journalists who might benefit from my insights won’t be able to.

The problem is that some types of analysis are so complex I can’t understand them. Chi-Square, T-Charts, Z Numbers… I BOGGLE. Lots and lots of math. To date, math wise, I’ve used only mean, median, mode, slope, correlation, difference, percent difference.

Today, looking for sources for a chapter I’m writing about Foursquare (older data. Trying to fill in some areas of my dissertation and trying to use older data I’d not used yet to get more chapters written faster, rather than waiting for some new event to happen), I found this thesis about social media. It makes me happy as the analysis is very accessible. It doesn’t appear to be hyper academic. The writing level appears to be lower. The level of writing does not appear super formal. In short, it reaffirms to me that while I feel my writing is at times inferior, it isn’t. Some one else wrote a thesis and it got approved. (The major criticism I’d have of their dissertation is it has a lot of meaningless images that aren’t cited as figures.)

That thesis has 127 total works cited in the bibliography. I’m currently at 118. I should easily be able to get to the total that author has. I might be able to get more. I’ll need some one to edit my work to determine if I need to add citations in various places and to make sure my citations are more consistent.

Pick me ups for the win yo!

I’ve got two chapters written since December 18. I should have a third chapter written today if I stop being so lazy and off task. When I’m done with this, I should have a another long chapter that should add about 5,000 words. (Unlike some of my other analysis, because of the complexity of a particular scandal, I’m going to break it up into four different analysis: 1 player on Facebook, 1 player on Twitter, 1 player on other sites, Comparing the performance of team that those people play for to other teams.) I should crack the 40,000 word mark by the end of the day. Weeee. I think I have a 75,000 word max for my dissertation.

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It is Monday morning and I’m trying to get in the habit of posting Fourquare checkin totals. For this week, the Boxing Day Test led all checkin totals. Lots of games had no checkins. The list of games/sporting events I’m tracking can be found here. If there is anything I’m missing, please let me know. These comparisons work best when I have as complete of a list as possible.

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The team and athlete list is based on the list found at ListDecember26.csv. I’m going to compare the results for December 26 with the November 18 most popular list. The December list is much more comprehensive than the November 18 one, which could account for some of the changes in ranking.

Data, data, data! Squee! Squee! Squee!

Looking at the data for comparison purposes, something got a bit screwed up somewhere. Teams are missing that shouldn’t be missing, namely the ACT Brumbies. The only reason I can think of for that is if a team renamed their account (seems doubtful) and I just didn’t pick up on it. Translation: I know the totals are right but I didn’t write the script so I can’t trouble shoot as to why these teams are missing. (What may have happened is that there were errors and some accounts were missed so I need to run the script again.)

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• Thanks Nick Riewoldt, I wanted to spend my evening benchmarking data about you. :/ (Plus side, St. Kilda data I have a lot of already.) #
• Benchmarking Nick Riewoldt : bit.ly/e3LDkP #
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• And MySpace crashed by browser. Another reason not to use it. :/ #
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• If I could knock off another 3 chapters, 7,500 words… would be awesome. #
• Looks like some one is deleting FB pages calling Riewoldt a pussy and other vulgar words. #
• 36 hour change for Nick Riewoldt fan community on Facebook : bit.ly/dHVmzZ #gosaints #afl #
• St. Kilda Saints Alexa Rank in response to Riewoldt/Dawson/Dal Santo controversy : bit.ly/gBKB1T #gosaints #afl #
• I've been on Twitter 1,002 days. Wow. Long time. #
• And now for something completely offtopic: @Subway on Foursquare in Chicago : bit.ly/if2ZgJ #
• Your Twitter follow and profile information is not private. If you want it to be, delete your Twitter account and it becomes private! #
• Today's goal is to finish rewriting a blog entry into a dissertation chapter. Not sure how optimistic I am about this getting completed. #
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• I earned the Tron Box Office sticker on @GetGlue! bit.ly/hXKx0t #
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By Laura Hale
December 25, 2010

A copy of this paper can be found in PDF form here along with the related appendix. This is a first draft of a paper. It should be readable on its own. This article will eventually end up as a chapter in my dissertation. Additional statistics about Greg Inglis and the social media community have been collected. Given the scope of the topic, it was not possible to integrate this data into the paper. Please leave a comment if you want that data.

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There is a gentlemen’s agreement between the three major football codes in Australia that players will not be poached from one code to another. This agreement is referenced by O’Neill (2007), a former Australian Rugby Union CEO, who controversially broke during the period when rugby union transition from an amateur game to a professional one. The code poaching agreement was an underlying part of the shock in the international and Australian sport media during the winter of 2009 when Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau left the NRL for AFL expansion teams. (Pearce, 2009, July 30) (Sky Sports, 2009, October 20) (Gould, 2010) (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) Some of the media coverage at the time implied that code poaching was intended as a publicity stunt (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) to help build the fanbase amongst rugby league fans in a traditional rugby league stronghold.

During the winter of 2009, when a few prominent NRL players left, one player that was discussed, as another code switcher was Greg Inglis, a Melbourne Storm player, who was being actively courted by Essendon. (Gould, 2010, June 10) (Bradshaw, 2009, July 29) Nothing came of this talk during the winter. Subsequently, the Melbourne Storm went through a major salary cap controversy that resulted in the club forfeiting all their games during the 2010 season. The Melbourne Storm had to clear space to get back into compliance with the league’s salary cap. When the team wasn’t trying to keep Inglis in order to continue their tradition of winning, the team was trying to get rid of him to clear salary cap space. (Marshall, 2010, July 21) (Johns, 2010, April 26) In November 2010, it looked like Inglis was going to move to the South Sydney Rabbitohs. (Badel, 2010, November 11) In mid-December 2010, the NRL refused to certify Inglis’s contract, citing third party deals in violation of the salary as the reason. (Phelps, 2010, December 19). This led Inglis to talk to Essendon and switching codes. (AAP) Based on the author’s observation, a number of people on Twitter felt that Inglis was talking to the team in order to leverage his contract situation with the NRL and Essendon was talking to Inglis to get positive media attention. If that was the case, it worked as the NRL dropped their objections and Inglis was signed to the Rabbitohs on December 24, 2010. (Mawby & AAP, 2010, December 24)

The potential code switch for Inglis had implications for two leagues, the NRL and the AFL, and three clubs, the Storm, Rabbitohs and Essendon Bombers. Everyone involved had their own agendas. Essendon and South Sydney appeared to want Inglis to bask in the player’s reflected glory. The Storm probably wanted to clear their salary cap so they can gain back their reputation was winners. The NRL appeared to want to keep one of their best players. The AFL appeared to want to have an opportunity to gain audience share by poaching one of their competition’s best players.

Based on the author’s observation, Inglis’s code change possibility was interesting enough to warrant a number of comments on Twitter. The agendas at play are worth exploring to see if they were realized: Did Essendon see an increased amount of interest in the club as a result of their discussions with Inglis? Did interest in South Sydney differ from the result of the potentially losing one of the league’s premiere players? The social media community often responds much more quickly than the offline community: It takes a real commitment to become a club member and such a decision is not likely to be made while a player’s future is up in question. Given the speed of Inglis’s Essendon exploration and termination before signing with Rabbitohs, the online analysis approach is best. This chapter will look at the that using Alexa, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia data to see how a potential player code change effects teams on both side of the decision.

Alexa

Alexa allows people to track the comparative amount of traffic to websites. It works using a toolbar that people install, which then tracks sites the people install. (alberto, 2009, July 13) Alexa is one of the few sites that provides traffic ranking for Australia. While it cannot tell people exactly how site visitors, it can give an idea of the site ranking amongst technology, public relations and social media friendly users. From December 4 to December 25, the world rank and Australian rank for the official websites of the Rabbitohs, Melbourne Storm, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Sydney Roosters, Essendon Bombers, Geelong Cats and Collingwood Magpies were recorded. The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Sydney Roosters, Geelong Cats and Collingwood Magpies were included as controls. The AFL and NRL sites were not included as a controversy involving St. Kilda Saints players occurred during the same period. That situation involved a fair amount of criticism for the AFL’s response.

Figure 1. Alexa Australian AFL and NRL site rank from 4 Dec to 25 Dec.

News that Inglis was talking with Essendon began around December 18. The Rabbitohs saw a drop in traffic around that time, before it grew back. The day after the Rabbitohs officially signed Inglis was when they saw the most traffic during the Inglis affair. During that same period, the Melbourne Storm’s rank mostly fell, with a one-day spike the day after Inglis’s official departure. As a point of reference, the Australian rank for Sydney Roosters steadily increased and the Bulldog’s rank steadily decreased. Over in the AFL, Essendon saw a steady increase in traffic while Inglis was talking to the club. A drop in rank occurred for Essendon on the day the Rabbitoh’s announced Inglis’s official signing. During that same period, Collingwood’s traffic rank steadily declined. Geelong’s traffic stayed in the same general range, with a traffic boost on Christmas day.

World rank data, available in Appendix 10, shows the Rabbitohs rank had a greater fluctuation over that period. It went from 753,186 on December 18 to 772,298 on December 23 to 739,137 on December 25. Traffic appeared to drop off as it looked like Inglis may not sign, only to pick up again when people began speculating that Inglis’s were a feint to get the NRL to agree to the contract. From December 18 to December 25, the world rank for the Melbourne Storm, Sydney Roosters and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs all decreased. In the AFL during that same period, Essendon saw a steady increase in their traffic rank while Geelong and Collingwood saw a steady decrease.

Australian and world rank both suggest that Essendon benefited from an increase in site visitors in response to Inglis’s talks with the clubs, while the Rabbitohs saw a decrease in traffic until it looked like Inglis was actually going to sign with the club. This suggests that Essendon’s flirting with Inglis helped create interest in the team.

Beyond traffic rank, Alexa can provide demographic data about a site’s visitors. On December 9, the information that Alexa provided about the Rabbitoh’s website was:

Rabbitohs.com.au is ranked #717,638 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. This site is in the “South Sydney Rabbitohs” category of sites. The site is relatively popular among users in the cities of Invercargill (where it is ranked #132) and Sydney (#10,897), and visitors to Rabbitohs.com.au view an average of 2.8 unique pages per day. Approximately 18% of visits to the site are referred by search engines.

Besides a little fluctuation in the numbers, the profile did not change by December 25. Essendon’s site visitors were described as follows on December 11:

There are 248,437 sites with a better three-month global Alexa traffic rank than Bomberland. While the site is ranked #4,157 in Australia, where roughly 84% of its visitors are located, it is also popular in Malta, where it is ranked #440. The demographics of the site’s audience do not show substantial differences from internet averages. Bomberland’s content places it in the “Essendon Bombers” category. Search engines refer approximately 6% of visits to the site.

Like the Rabbitoh’s, Essendon’s visitor profile did not change by December 25. While Essendon may have benefited traffic wise and the Rabbitohs may have been slightly punished for the potential loss of Inglis, in neither case was there enough of a difference to change Alexa’s profile of visitors to the official club sites.

Facebook

According to Alexa, Facebook is the second most popular site in Australia. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010, December 25). AFL clubs were quick to start using the site; clubs in the NRL were a bit slower and not all of them had official fan pages until partway through the 2010 season.

Facebook fan page membership is a good way to measure comparative interest. Membership totals were recorded for the same clubs looked at on Alexa on December 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25. This data can be found in Appendix 10. Once this was compiled, the membership difference and percentage difference was calculated for the period between December 5 and 16, December 16 and December 25, December 16 and December 22, and December 22 and December 25. This data can be found in Table 1. These time periods represent a period before the code change speculation, during the whole of the code change speculation, the period before most speculation that the talk was a ploy, and during period where most of the speculation occurred.

Table 1
Growth for official NRL and AFL fan pages

The South Sydney Rabbitohs percentage growth was similar to that of the Bulldogs and the Roosters across all periods. They were outperformed by the Melbourne Storm, who were losing Inglis. For total growth, all the NRL teams looked at outperformed the Rabbitohs. Essendon outperformed its two AFL counterparts, both in total new fans and percentage growth. These differences do not change when the slope calculation is used. This data supports the idea that Essendon benefited from its brief flirtation with Greg Inglis, whereas Inglis’s contract and potential contract did not provide the Rabbitohs with any benefit in terms of Facebook followers.

On December 23, a search was run on Facebook for unofficial fan pages about Inglis. Of the groups found, only one referenced the AFL. It can be found at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Inglis-to-AFL/118712858169963 . Between December 23 and December 25, the page gained zero new followers, maintaining its fan level at 15. Based two links submitted to the page, it dates back to the earlier speculation that Inglis might have made a code switch. There were no fan pages that referenced his possible signing by the Rabbitohs and two fan pages about his abortive move to the Brisbane Broncos. One of these pages, Im going to Brisbane Broncos, LOL JK!! Im Greg Inglis, saw an increase of two members between December 24 and December 25. This increase could be interpreted as annoyance over the continued issues regarding Inglis’s perceived loyalties and willingness to keep promises to clubs/fans that he was perceived soon to be signing a contract with. Beyond that, the lack of creation of groups dedicated to Inglis and the Rabbitohs/Essendon could signal a lack of interest by Facebook fans of those clubs in having Inglis play for them.

Facebook growth indicates that Essendon benefited from the speculation that Inglis was going to switch codes and play for them. The Rabbitohs did not receive an answering bump. Fans were not motivated to join or create pages about the possibility of a code switch for Inglis. There was some benefit for Essendon, but if the latter had happened, it would have made a stronger case of Inglis being a benefit to the club.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging site, allowing users to share their thoughts in 140 characters or less to anyone who chooses to follow them. According to Alexa on December 25, 2010, it is the ninth most popular site in Australia. Like Facebook, it is popular with Australian sport clubs; every club in the AFL and NRL has an official account.

Like Facebook, one way to determine if the Rabbitohs or Essendon received any benefit from Inglis’s code changing talk is to look at the official account for the team. This data was gathered every day from December 8 to December 25, with the exception of the 22, for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Melbourne Storm, and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. As Sydney Roosters data was not gathered, the Newcastle Knights will be used for comparison purposes. Over that same period, data was collected for the Essendon Bombers and Collingwood Magpies. As Geelong Cats data was not, they have been replaced with the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn Hawks. This data can be found in Appendix 10.

Once this data was collected, the difference, percent difference and slope was calculate for the period between December 11 and December 18, December 18 and December 25, December 18 and December 23, and December 23 to December 25. This data can be found in Table 2.

Table 2
Twitter Follower Statistics

Using the NRL other teams as a benchmark, the Rabbitohs did not derive a follower benefit as a result of the Inglis code change story. On the other hand, Essendon likely derived some benefit from the Inglis story as their percentage growth changed substantially from the period before the Inglis story broke, during the story, and after it was confirmed that Inglis signed with the Rabbitohs. Collingwood, Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs had much more consistent, but smaller percentage and total growth over all periods.

Another way to look at the Inglis code change flirting on Twitter involves using a tool called Twitter Venn, found at http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php . This tool allows users to input three terms. A venn diagram is then created using Twitter search to show how many times these terms were used together. This was done with the keywords Inglis, Essendon and Rabbitohs. The results are viewable in Figure 2. Another venn was created using the keywords Inglis, AFL and NRL. This venn can be found in Appendix 10.

Figure 2 . 25-Dec Twitter Venn.

The Twitter venn suggests that people were more interested in talking about the possibility of Inglis joining Essendon than they were interested in talking about Inglis’s contract with the Rabbitohs.

Both Twitter follower patterns and the Twitter venn suggest there was increased interest Essendon as a result of the possible code switch. The Rabbitohs did not benefit from increased followers, nor was there a similar level of conversation about the Rabbitohs as there was for Essendon. The code switch talks helped Essendon.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The English language version has over a million articles. According to Alexa (2010, December 25), Wikipedia is the eighth most popular site in Australia. There is an active movement by Australian Wikipedians to improve the quality of AFL and NRL related articles. Some of these articles have over 2,000 edits.

Wikipedia often acts as a major news portal when scandals hit and related articles often get a large number of page views. During the Akermanis and Monaghan controversies, there was an increase in views to the player’s pages; there was a smaller increase in article views for the clubs the athletes played for. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where users actively discuss a topic, or chose to identify with a club by following or fanning them, viewing a Wikipedia article can be seen as a form of passive interest in that no one sees this expression of interest. Reading an article does not imply the same level of interest. Article view data is still worth examining in order to gage the level of non-fan interest around a topic, epitomized by the aforementioned Akermanis and Monaghan situations.

Article view data is available from Wikipedia article traffic statistics at http://stats.grok.se/ . The page views per article for the period between December 1 and December 24, 2010 were recorded for the following articles: Melbourne Storm, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Newcastle Knights, Sydney Roosters, Essendon Football Club, Geelong Football Club, Collingwood Football Club, and Greg Inglis. This data can be found in Appendix 10. A line graph was created using this data for the period between December 10 and December 24 and can be found in Figure 3.

Figure 3 . Wikipedia Article Views.

Just looking at the graph, neither Essendon nor the Rabbitohs saw a large traffic increase on December 22, when the Greg Inglis article saw the greatest number of views. This observation can be verified by looking at the correlation between the club article and the Greg Inglis article. In the period between December 1 and December 24, the Inglis/Essendon correlation was -0.02 and Inglis/Rabbitohs correlation was 0.03. This correlation is so small, it suggests a random pattern between the two. If the period is shortened to between December 18 and December 24, the period when speculation about a code change was at its greatest, the correlation for both strengthens a bit to 0.20 and -0.36 respectively. Still, these numbers still largely imply a random relationship. A meaningful correlation does exist between Essendon and the Rabbitohs in the period between December 18 and December 24: 0.76. This says that views for the articles both went up and down together. For the period between December 1 and December 24, the correlation was 0.45. While the Essendon/Rabbitohs correlation appears meaningful, the pattern of increasing and decreasing could relate to overall patterns increasing and decreasing interest in the AFL and NRL: There is a correlation of 0.83 between Geelong and Collingwood. Neither of these clubs was involved in any major trades or controversies during that same period.

Wikipedia correlations and the line graph suggest that neither Essendon nor South Sydney benefited with increased page views as a result of the Inglis code switch story. Put in the context of Facebook and Twitter, there was much less interest by the general public in this story. People on Wikipedia did not care much about Inglis’s possible code change.

Conclusion

In mid-December 2010, Greg Inglis talked with Essendon’s coach about the possibility of playing for the club as the NRL had refused to certify Inglis’s contract with the South Sydney Rabbitohs. This topic was talked about on Twitter, Facebook and other places on the Internet. There was speculation that this was a play for media attention by Essendon, and that Inglis was using Essendon to strengthen his position with the NRL. Whether or not this speculation was on the mark, Inglis’s actions had an impact on online actions taken by fans.

Alexa data suggests that Essendon benefited from talking with Inglis, while the Rabbitohs may have been punished with less traffic as a result of a major signing not happening. Alexa also suggests that despite traffic patterns changing, the web audience for both clubs did not change: The Rabbitohs and Essendon kept their established demographic patterns. Audience activation or deactivation was inside its own fan community pool.

Essendon also saw a bump in new fans on Facebook, where the Rabbitohs did not. Despite the increase in followers, Facebook fans did not create or join groups and fan pages to support Inglis joining their club. Essendon benefited on Facebook but not as much as they could have.

Twitter data show that Essendon again got a follower bump as a result of Inglis’s code change flirting; the Rabbitohs did not. Beyond follower count, more of the discussion on Twitter involving Inglis mentioned Essendon than the Rabbitohs.

While Essendon saw an increase in followers and traffic on the previous sites, it did not see a similar bump on Wikipedia in response to Inglis’s talks with them. Likewise, the Rabbitohs did not see an increase or decrease in article views as a result of the Inglis’s actions.

Inglis’s actions suggesting he might play for Essendon helped the club activate its fanbase, getting the team increased web traffic, more Facebook followers, more Twitter followers and generated more discussion on Twitter than Inglis and the Rabbitohs. The South Sydney Rabbitohs either were punished for Inglis’s possible defection or had no change in fan community behavior. This sort of flirting might be a good thing for clubs who desire some short term attention online.

References

• AAP. (2010, December 24). Future of Greg Inglis up in the air after talks with Essendon coach James Hird. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/future-of-greg-inglis-up-in-the-air-after-talks-with-essendon-coach-james-hird/story-e6frf9jf-1225975786549

• alberto. (2009, July 13). “How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?” Alexa. Retrieved June 8, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/help/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17&sid=70b7eee4fd8d92a4f74c66e3680d1275

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Facebook.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Twitter.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com

• Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, December 25). Wikipedia.org – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org

• Badel, P. (2010, November 11). Crowe and Mundine turned GI, says Pearl. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/crowe-and-mundine-turned-gi-says-pearl/story-e6frfgbo-1225951401604

• Bradshaw, F. (2009, July 29). Bronco Karmichael Hunt to switch from NRL to AFL. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/bronco-karmichael-hunt-to-switch-from-nrl-to-afl/story-0-1225755775191

• Clark, J. (2010). Twitter Venn. Twitter Venn. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php

• Gould, J. (2010). Tonga taunt. Rugby League Week, 10. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

• Gould, R. (2010, June 10). Greg Inglis’ path to Essendon. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/greg-inglis-path-to-essendon/story-e6frf9if-1225877655582

• Johns, A. (2010, April 26). Storm must shed star player. Herald Sun. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/storm-must-shed-star-player/story-e6frfgh6-1225858112043

• Marshall, M. (2010, July 21). Storm star Greg Inglis set for Brisbane Broncos. The Courier-Mail. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/storm-star-greg-inglis-set-for-brisbane-broncos/story-e6freomx-1225894993769

• Mawby, N., & AAP. (2010, December 24). Greg Inglis signed to South Sydney Rabbitohs. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/nrl/greg-inglis-signed-to-south-sydney-rabbitohs/story-e6frfgeo-1225975989228

• O’Neill, J. (2007). It’s only a game, a life in sport. North Sydney: Random House Australia.

• Pearce, N. (2009, July 30). Karmichael Hunt stuns Australia by making historic code switch to Aussie Rules. The Telegraph. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyleague/5939159/Karmichael-Hunt-stuns-Australia-by-making-historic-code-switch-to-Aussie-Rules.html

• Phelps, J. (2010, December 19). South Sydney Rabbitohs offload Beau Champion, Ben Lowe and Michael Crocker after Greg Inglis deal blocked. Herald Sun. Newspaper, . Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/south-sydney-rabbitohs-offload-beau-champion-ben-lowe-and-michael-crocker-after-greg-inglis-deal-blocked/story-e6frf9if-1225973353047

• Sky Sports. (2009, October 20). Hunt heading to Biarritz. Sky Sports. Retrieved December 25, 2010, from http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,16616_5639530,00.html

Appendix 10

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 2)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 1)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular sport league/team websites in Australia

This data feels kind of meh. Mostly it feels meh because bebo is pretty stagnant. That stagnation continues, despite all the Greg Inglis code changing hype.

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• Greg Inglis on digg
• Greg Inglis on Facebook
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