Ozzie Sport

Laura Hale, University of Canberra

November 7, 2010

A copy of this article is available in .pdf.

This article references the Jason Akermanis and Melbourne Storm articles.

Abstract

The Joel Monaghan dog sex picture story broke on November 3, 2010. By November 5, people were demanding that Monaghan be sacked. Sponsors were threatening to pull their support if the team failed to fire him. This was another major Australian sport controversy in the making. Given the sponsor demands and media attention to the story, the questions are: How much do fans of the Canberra Raiders and the NRL really care about it, and what is the impact of Monaghan’s action on the online fan base? This paper answers that question by looking at Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wikia and a few other selected sites. It concludes that the story was largely a non-event in terms of causing people to stop barracking for the Raiders. It also finds that there may be indicators that this type of story gets more attention in geographic areas where the NRL would hope to grow their fanbase. This latter part could be the biggest problem for the NRL.

Keywords: NRL, Canberra Raiders, Joel Monaghan, Mad Monday, RSPCA, social media

Joel Monaghan’s Mad Monday and the Online Canberra Raiders Fan Base

Figure 1. 5 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

Figure 2. 6 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

Figure 3. 7 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

In Canberra, the story of Joel Monaghan’s Mad Monday actions has been above the fold in the city’s leading newspaper for two days and was the whole cover on the third. The story was sensational and received coverage in other newspapers across the country such as The Daily Telegraph, The Herald-Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Adelaide Advertiser and The Australian. According to The Canberra Times, Monaghan was involved in a prank where he was photographed “sitting on a tiled floor with a dog’s head near his exposed groin.” (Dutton & Moloney, 2010, November 5) The pictures had gone viral on Twitter (Dutton, 2010, November 6) and sponsors threatened to pull their support if the Raiders failed to sack Monghan for his actions. (Dutton, 2010, November 6)

This news was bad news for the Raiders as sponsorship is an important revenue stream for the club. Beyond that, Monaghan’s actions are potentially bad for rugby league and the NRL who have an image problem in Australia, where players are viewed by some people as uneducated thugs. This characterization of NRL players can be witnessed by doing a quick Google search for NRL scandal as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. A screencap of a search for NRL scandal on Google. Screenshot is dated Nov 6, 2010.

Scandals like Monaghan’s have the possibility of hurting the NRL in terms of growing the size of their potential audience and widening their demographic base so that they can better compete with other leagues in the country like the AFL, who draw upon larger segments of the population, including women. Measuring exactly how people respond to these controversies is difficult as there are an array of dependent and independent variables that factor into why people support their clubs, and how much money they will spend to do that. These variables include a club’s performance, loyalty to a club, available disposable income, amount of free time, availability for attending matches, television coverage, and merchandise to name a few.

It is an interesting exercise to critically examine how scandals can impact a club’s supporter base. In the case of the Jason Akermanis scandal in the AFL in June 2010, there was little negative impact in terms of supporters shifting their loyalties away from the club in the immediate aftermath of the scandal. (Hale, 2010, June 14) In the NRL, the Melbourne Storm salary cap controversy in May 2010 saw a huge immediate spike in interest and demonstrations of online loyalty to the club. (Hale, 2010, May 20)

The question for this scandal is thus: What was the immediate impact on the online Canberra Raiders community in response to the media coverage of the Joel Monaghan dog sex prank? This paper will attempt to answer that question by looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, Wikia, YouTube and Yahoo!Groups.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging platform that is popular in Australia. According to Alexa, it is the tenth most popular site in the country. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010) There is an active community of Australian sport fans on it who frequently discuss what is going on with their favorite teams and athletes. Sport organizations, leagues, clubs and athletes also use Twitter to engage with fans. The Canberra Raiders are on Twitter at @RaidersCanberra.

There are several methods that can be employed to begin to understand how the Canberra Raiders fanbase responded to the Monaghan controversy that broke on November 4, 2010. This includes looking at any shift in the geographic location of Canberra Raiders fans on Twitter, comparing the total number of new followers for the Raiders to other teams over the same period, looking at the geographic location of Tweets that mention Monaghan versus the team, and looking to see how many Tweets mention Monaghan and the Raiders together. Each of these different methods gives a different perspective on how fans responded and when looked at together, give a more informed big picture perspective.

One way of measuring the impact of the Monaghan scandal on Twitter is to compare the geographic location of the Canberra Raiders followers and to see if there were any noticeable shifts before and after the scandal broke. The way this was done in this paper was to get a list of all the followers for @RaidersCanberra, get the location that the user included on their profile, and get the timezone that the person listed themselves as from. Using those two pieces of information, translate that into a real location. For example, “canberra ” would be the location Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Once as many locations have been identified as possible, they are totaled by date.

The October 15 @RaidersCanberra list had 996 followers on it. Of these, 772 had a country location attached to them. The November 6 @RaidersCanberra list had 1,071 followers on it. Of these, a country location could be identified for 790. When locations are removed because they are not Australian or New Zealand locations that include a city, there remains 454 locations for October 15 and 483 for November 6. Table 1 shows difference for followers by city and date. Only the cities where the difference did not equal zero were included.

Table 1

@RaidersCanberra followers by City

There were 93 total Australian and New Zealand cities on this list. Of them, only 27 saw any difference in the total volume of followers from that location. Some of these differences could be explained as an issue with processing or user profile changes. A person may have used geographic coordinates for their location and updated them as they traveled around, resulting in a change in city location for the user. Some may have removed location information from their profiles. The populations are so small that these small shifts in normal user activity may have nothing to do with being a Raiders fan.

The independent user profile variables aside, the data appears to support a conclusion geography did not play a role in choosing to follow or not follow the team in response to the controversy. There might be small micropatterns at play. Of the four New Zealand cities where there was a difference, three saw a loss in followers for the team. This might be a bit misleading as four New Zealand cities saw no change in the total number of followers from them. Of the four cities that saw gains of five or more, all are large cities that are traditional league strong holds. Their increase is probably reflective of that reality, rather than as an increase in interest in the team because of the controversy. Geography does not appear to have played a role in Twitter users decision to follow or not follow the team in response to the Monaghan situation.

On Twitter, people follow accounts that are of interest to them. This can be seen as a positive expression of interest in the club as people are unlikely to follow groups or organizations they despise. By measuring comparative growth patterns, we can begin to see if the scandal had an impact on the Raider’s Twitter follower fanbase. As the official team account has not mentioned the controversy and the Raiders have not changed their Twitter practices in response to this controversy, the official account content can be excluded as a variable for growth; the Raiders have not used the situation to try to leverage their fanbase. Given that, Table 2 shows the total follower counts by date for the Raiders compared to the official accounts for the Manly Sea Eagles, Gold Coast Titans, New Zealand Warriors and Melbourne Storm.

Table 2

Total Twitter Followers: Raiders, Eagles, Titans, Warriors, Storm

The controversy did not appear to create a spike in new followers for the Canberra Raiders. The total number of new followers for the most recent period available with the data suggests that the total number of new followers for the Raiders is in line with other teams with similar follow totals.

Beyond user follow patterns, it is sometimes useful to look at content. The geographic location of Tweets is one method of looking at tweets. There is a tool called Tribalytics that allows this to be done. Tribalytics maintains a list of over 200,000 Australian based Twitter users, sorted by state. Tribalytics allows users to search for a word or phrase on Twitter and adds up the total number of people who tweeted using it by state. This data can then be visualized over time. Table 3 uses data provided by Tribalytics to show the total number of tweets that mention Monaghan.

Table 3

Tribalytics: Tweets that mention Monaghan by state

The geographic location of the Tweets that mention Monaghan suggests that the controversy had the biggest audience in New South Wales, one of rugby league’s traditional strongholds. The situation in regards to Queensland and Victoria is interesting. Victoria has a much larger population than Queensland. Thus, it is not surprising that the total number of Twitterers and Tweets from Victoria is larger than Queensland. On the other hand, Victoria is not a rugby league stronghold; Queensland is. Logically, it would seem that this story should be bigger in Queensland but it isn’t. Interpreting what this means in a practical sense is difficult. The best conclusion is that this story will not help the NRL’s attempt to expand into Victoria, as fans are more aware of negative news regarding players and the league. On the other hand, for the traditional stronghold of Queensland, the controversy is not as interesting to the local population so there should be less risk in terms of attempting to grow the fan community for the NRL in the state.

The last major method for analyzing Twitter given a controversy like this is to examine the other words used in Tweets that include the word Monaghan. This can be done using Tribalytics, which provides a table that includes a list of the most popular words used in tweets mentioning a term and the percentage of time that the word is included in a Tweet involving a specific keyword. Table 4 was generated using Tribalytics and the keyword Monaghan.

Table 4

Popular words used in Tweets mentioning Monaghan

This table suggests good things for the NRL and the Canberra Raiders. While people are discussing Monaghan and a lot of them are mentioning the dog, only 9.64% mention the NRL and even fewer Tweets reference that Monaghan plays for the Canberra Raiders. Based on Tweets, people are not necessarily associating the controversy with the NRL and the Raiders. Things may not be as bad as they could be for both organizations in terms of what Australians are choosing to focus on.

Overall on Twitter, the controversy involving Joel Monaghan has been rather neutral for the Raiders and the NRL. The Canberra Raiders did not see a mass defecting of followers. Those that did leave were geographically distributed so there was not a geographic area that responded particularly badly. Outside of New South Wales, most of the tweets came from an area where the NRL is not strong: The NRL should not lose strength in their traditional strongholds. The controversy may hurt their ability to push into Victoria as it may reaffirm negative opinions about rugby league. When people are tweeting about Monaghan, they are rarely connecting it to the Raiders and the NRL. While Twitter suggests not all-good news, things could be much, much worse in terms of the respective fanbases.

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social networks in Australia. According to Alexa, the site ranks as the second most popular web site in the country. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010) According to Facebook’s “What do you want to advertise?” page on November 6, 2010, the site has 9,530,800 users from Australia. The site probably has more Australian sport fans on it than any other site in Australia. This is because a lot of the users are fans of the fan pages run by Australian sport leagues, clubs and athletes. Several of these official fan pages have well over 100,000 fans.

Given the large number of Australians using the network, the official presence of so many clubs and the amount of media attention paid to the service, a response to the Monaghan controversy was inevitable. Given the timing of the writing of this paper, there are two methods that can be used to measure the impact of the Joel Monaghan controversy on the Canberra Raiders’ fanbase on Facebook. The first way is to see if there has been a demographic shift in fans of the Canberra Raiders using Facebook’s advertising page data. The second is to measure the relative growth in the number of followers for the Raiders compared to other NRL teams. The third is to look at total and nature of the groups and fan pages created about Monaghan. As group and fan page size had not been recorded earlier, it is impossible to compare their growth like was done in the Akermanis paper.

Facebook’s advertising buy page provides demographic information about Facebook users in order to help advertisers target specific audiences. This information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and is the easiest method of accessing publicly available demographic data on Facebook. On November 5 and November 6, 2010, the number of Canberra Raiders fans were recorded that lived in Australia, in New South Wales and in the ACT. During this 24-hour period, there was no change in the size of these groups. Data regarding various demographic groups for the Canberra Raiders was also collected on June 16 and November 6, 2010. It can be found in Table 5. The gap between data collection periods is large and covers a period where a player was suspended for drink driving and the Canberra Raiders finals run.

Table 5

Facebook data regarding Canberra Raiders fan demographics

During this period, the number of engaged female fans engaged to men dropped to almost zero. The number of women interested in men who were married or in a relationship also dropped. The number of engaged male fans engaged to males also dropped. While it is unlikely that the controversy caused these population shifts, it is possible contributor as the Canberra Raiders may have had a net gain of zero but lost old followers and gained new followers.

The response to a controversy can also be looked at by examining the comparative growth of a team to other teams in a league. If fans connect the problem to the team, they may punish a team by removing their like or not liking the fan page at the same rate that fans of other teams like their fan page. Table 6 shows the comparative growth of the Canberra Raiders official Facebook page to other teams for the period between July 30 and November 6, 2010.

Table 6

NRL official team fan page growth

The Canberra Raiders are listed three times because they have three official accounts: A user page and two fan pages. Thus, it is a little hard to make good comparisons as each experienced different growth levels. The time period is also a long one, which includes a drink-driving incident involving a player and the club’s finals run. That said, if the controversy did have an impact on short term growth, it is not readily apparent or a big one as the three Canberra accounts are not on either extreme for percentage growth. It is unlikely that the controversy had an impact on the club’s Facebook fan growth. It may still yet but that will require waiting to see if the controversy continues for another few weeks.

Facebook makes it easy to create groups and fan pages and many people do in response to controversies. One example of this is the Jason Akermanis controversy, where fifteen anti-groups were created within three days of the story breaking. Many of these groups had names that questioned his intelligence and had names that implied criticism of his views on homosexuality. By day four of the controversy, the largest group had over 540 fans. The Joel Monaghan Facebook group and fan page creation situation is similar to that of Akermanis in that fifteen groups and pages had been included. The difference is that the membership was much smaller. The top likes for an anti-Joel page is 127. The titles of the Monaghan groups also contrast to that of Akermanis in that there is not implied condemnation of zoophilia and animal abuse. The group names also do not appear to criticize his intelligence. Rather, the names involve jokes about dogs. Table 7 gives an idea as to the nature of these groups and their size as of November 6, 2010.

Table 7

Size of Joel Monaghan related Facebook group and fan pages

Against the backdrop of the Jason Akermanis situation, this appears pretty favorable for the Raiders and the NRL. It could be concluded that the nature of these groups is a positive for the Canberra Raiders and the NRL in that the groups do not mention the Canberra Raiders. They do not imply an activation of a moralistic fan base that could be highly motivated to cause trouble for the team. These groups also have very little reach and show that many people are uninterested in joining even for a laugh.

While the available Facebook data for this section was sparse, what is available suggests that the Canberra Raiders did not lose a fan base because of Monaghan’s actions. The community that appeared left the Raiders was one that they weren’t specifically targeting such as gay men and women in relationships. Those who were expressing anger over the situation were not doing so from a troublesome moralistic position; rather, they were doing so from a less serious perspective involving cracking jokes about having sex with dogs. Like Twitter, the Facebook situation does not look particularly good but it could be much worse.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the first sources that many Australians turn to when a news story breaks. The articles on the site often provide useful background, contain brief useful summations of ongoing events and include links to find additional information. At the same time, Wikipedia is important because of its high search engine placement. While people may not be looking for Wikipedia articles, they may just stumble upon it because the result is the first or second one for the term they are searching for.

In terms of the Joel Monaghan controversy and Wikipedia, the easiest way to measure the controversy as it impacts the Canberra Raiders would be to compare the total page views and edits between the article about Monaghan and the one about the Raiders. If the controversy reflected more upon Monaghan than his team, the expectation is the page view spike would be higher for the player. This information was found at http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Joel_Monaghan and http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Canberra_Raiders and is visualized in Figure 5.

Figure 5. A visualize of the total number of article views using data from http://stats.grok.se/ .

In the two days prior to the story breaking, the Canberra Raider article had more views: 202 to 23 on November 1, 160 to 19 on November 2. The day that the story broke, the total article views were 984 for Monaghan’s and 162 for the Canberra Raiders’ article. At the onset, while people may have been aware that Monaghan’s actions took place during the Raiders’ Mad Monday event, they did not seek out additional information on the Raiders, like seeing if the Raiders article had a section on Mad Monday.

The Wikipedia article views data strongly suggest that people were less interested in the Canberra Raiders and more interested in Joel Monaghan. While the content on the Monaghan page includes many references to his playing for the Canberra Raiders, the page view data supports a conclusion that people were less interested in the team and their response to the controversy than they were interested in knowing what exactly Monaghan had done.

Another way of measuring interest in a topic on Wikipedia is to look at the article’s edit history. The history possibly provides two methods for analysis: Total edits per article that can be viewed as an active edit participation counter to the passive reading consumption. The other possible method would involve trying to determine the location of the edits made to both articles. The latter is possible if anonymous edits were geotagged using IP address information to establish the location. This would be useful because the Raiders are probably striving for a fan base in and around Canberra. If most negative edits are coming from inside Canberra, that would be more problematic in terms of maintaining a local fan base than if the edits were coming from outside of Australia or in Australian locations that are not traditional NRL bases. This type of analysis, while possible, is extremely unreliable; many programs that produce this information have conflicts with others in attempting to accurately identify the city that the IP address originated from. Because of these issues, that methodology will not be done in this article. The first is another matter and can easily done.

The article about Joel Monaghan was created on March 17, 2006. As of the November 5, there have been 213 total edits to the English language article about Joel Monaghan. Of these, 47 edits or 22% of all edits to the article were made on and between November 3 and November 5, dates when the story broke. There likely would have been more edits to the article except the article was locked from editing by anyone except sysops at 4:49 UTC/15:49 Canberra time on November 4. In contrast, the Canberra Raiders article saw an increase in edits but was never locked to prevent anyone from editing. Still, given the difficulties in editing, there are noticeable difference between editing volume that can be seen in Table 8.

Table 8

Total edits to Joel Monaghan and Canberra Raiders Wikipedia articles

The volume of edits suggests that people were not as interested in putting information about Joel Monaghan in the Canberra Raiders article as they were in editing the article about Monaghan. The edit volume suggestions are supported by a critical reading of both articles, where the controversy is only mentioned on the article about Monaghan and not the article about the Canberra Raiders. This is good news for the Canberra Raiders because the Wikipedia article about the team appears high in Google rankings. The controversy is about Monaghan and not as much about the Raiders and their Mad Monday.

When all three things are looked at together, comparative article views, edits and content, the picture looks better for the Canberra Raiders. People visiting and contributing to Wikipedia who are interested in the situation are not as interested in the Canberra Raiders. The association between the two does not appear to be high.

Wikia

Wikia is a wiki company that hosts over a million wikis. These wikis can be created for free and about any topic that a person wants. There are several wikis on Wikia that have been created about Australian sport, including a wiki about the NRL that can be found at http://nrl.wikia.com/ . This wiki is very small and only has 23 articles. Since the controversy involving Monaghan started, there have been no edits to the wiki. The situation did not inspire any members of the large Wikia family to visit the wiki and create an article about the Canberra Raiders or Joel Monaghan. This could be read as another positive for the Canberra Raiders and the NRL as the situation did not active a dormant fan base to document the situation.

YouTube

YouTube is the largest video site online. It is also the second biggest search engine online. (Hill, 2008) It is a popular site for sport fans; several teams around the world for different sports capitalize on this by having their own official accounts including the Chicago Red Stars, Real Madrid, and Perth Glory. Beyond the presence of official team accounts, fans upload many videos. Fan videos can be music videos, news clips, and video blogs. The frequency of uploads is one way to determine interest in a club compared to other teams while a controversy is taking place. A comparison between the Canberra Raiders and other NRL teams and clubs can be found in Table 9.

Table 9

Total search results on YouTube for NRL related keywords

The total number of new videos uploaded between June 21 and November 7 that mentioned the Canberra Raiders is 148, about 80 more than any other team. There does not appear to be a clear reason for this as when the results are looked into to see what has been uploaded during this period, there is no major topic of interest, nor are all the videos being uploaded by one or two individuals. For the period between October 24 and November 7, the Canberra Raiders topped the table with 19 new videos. The next closest club is Parramatta with 11. It is highly likely that the increase in videos relates to the controversy, though not certain as the team had elevated video totals in the prior period when compared to other clubs.

Given the mixed conclusion from video totals over time, other YouTube variables need to be looked at. On November 5, a search result total of 20 was found for “Joel Monaghan”. By November 7, this had increased to 24. This suggests that as the controversy took off, there was a significant increase in interest about Joel Monaghan. A search on November 7 for “Canberra Raiders” “Joel Monaghan” had 10 results. This means that 41.7% of all videos that mentioned Monaghan also mentioned the team he was playing for on Mad Monday. It also means that only 2.3% of all videos that mention the Raiders also include a reference to Monaghan. If the 10 results are sorted by date, six were uploaded since the controversy broke. If only the Monaghan/Raiders videos that were uploaded between November 4 and November 7 are included, than 1.4% of all videos relate to it the controversy. Of the six videos that mention the Raiders and Monaghan, the least viewed video as of November 7 had 1,589 views. The most viewed video had 17,683 views. The average total views for these six videos was 6,352. This can be compared to the 4 videos uploaded prior to the controversy, where the least viewed had 788 views, the most viewed had 4,431 views and the average views was 2,406. The audience for the controversy-related videos was 2.6 times larger than the non-controversy videos.

The additional data does not really clarify the situation. The best conclusion that can be reached is that the Canberra Raiders had an already elevated audience of people uploading videos prior to the controversy. In the period around the controversy, if the six videos that mentioned the Raiders and Monaghan were removed, the Raiders would still be the top team for video uploads. The fan base continued to upload videos and these videos continued to be viewed but at a smaller rate than the videos referencing the controversy. On the whole though, YouTube data suggests that based on pure volume and established audience, the controversy will not have an adverse effect on the team’s fanbase because the controversy uploads represent a tiny segment of the content about them. There is not the quantity of videos about it that should be a long-term concern for the club in term of its image with their fanbase.

Yahoo!Groups

Mailing lists once were one of the most popular tools for Australian sport fans to use in order to communicate with each other. They were easy to create with hosts like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups. Two such lists still exist for Canberra Raiders fans: raiders and raiders82, both found on Yahoo!Groups. In the case of raiders, the list has 9 members, open membership and open posting. There has not been a new post since 2003. The controversy did not activate Raiders fans in terms of encouraging them to post. raiders82 has closed membership, requiring that the moderator approve new members. It currently has 128 members. The list had no posts on it between March 2008 and October 2010. There was one new post in November 2010. As the archives are not publicly available, what the contents are is not entirely clear but it could be assumed that the controversy inspired a fan to be less dormant in their support of the club. All things said, the controversy did not inspire much activity on this particular service. It suggests that things are not so heinous as to encourage people to condemn the team they support.

Conclusion

The Joel Monaghan controversy is different than a number of the other sporting controversies that took place during the 2010 NRL and AFL seasons. There were not the moralistic and human rights related issues underpinning it like there were for the Akermanis controversy and the racism controversy during the State of Origin. There was not the harm or potential to cause harm and death that there were for the alleged sexual assault by a St Kilda player or the drink-driving situation by another Canberra rugby player. There were not the illegal actions like the St Kilda player and the Canberra Raiders player allegedly did. There was not the break of unstated football rules regarding the poaching of players from rugby to Aussie rules like there was for the Israel Folau code change controversy. There was not the issue of cheating and bringing unfairness to the game that the Melbourne Storm salary cap violations had. The lack of these issues probably underscores the reasons why fans behaved online such as they did. This was a drunken act in a culture that can understand and relate to someone engaging in drunken stupidity. If other structural issues to the controversy had been at play with a similar amount of media coverage, if the Raiders had been in a bigger market and if the player had been more famous, this might have played differently, as the author’s Akermanis and Melbourne Storm controversy articles demonstrate.

Beyond the underlying variables regarding the nature of the controversy, the results suggest that the Monagahn controversy did not adversely effect the Canberra Raiders fan base in that there were few numbers that suggest the player and the Raiders were inextricably linked. On the other hand, the club did not receive a benefit from the controversy in that it did not inspire Raider fans and Canberrans to show support of the club by following them on Twitter, fanning them on Facebook, or editing articles about the team on Wikipedia and Wikia. The amount of interest about the controversy expressed in YouTube views, Tweets and views to the Monaghan page on Wikipedia suggests that there might be underlying structural image issues in places like Victoria where the NRL wants to grow its fanbase. In the end, the controversy did not hurt the team, but it did not help them.

References

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, November 6). Facebook.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, November 6). Twitter.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com

Dutton, C. (2010, November 6). Ultimatum to Raiders: sack Monaghan or risk sponsors. The Canberra Times, 1. Canberra.

Dutton, C., & Moloney, J. (2010, November 5). Disgraced Monaghan’s career on line as prank goes viral. The Canberra Times, 1. Canberra.

Hale, L. (2010, June 14). The impact of Jason Akermanis’s comments on the Western Bulldogs’s online fanbase. Ozzie Sport. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/07/the-impact-of-jason-akermaniss-comments-on-the-western-bulldogss-online-fanbase/

Hale, L. (2010, May 20). Online activity in the wake of the Melbourne Storm controversy. Ozzie Sport. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/05/online-activity-in-the-wake-of-the-melbourne-storm-controversy/

Henrik. (2010, November 6). Canberra Raiders. Wikipedia article traffic statistics. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Canberra_Raiders

Henrik. (2010, November 6). Joel Monaghan. Wikipedia article traffic statistics. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Joel_Monaghan

Hill, J. (2008, October 16). YouTube surpasses Yahoo as world’s #2 search engine. TG Daily. Retrieved October 24, 2010, from http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/39777-youtube-surpasses-yahoo-as-world%E2%80%99s-2-search-engine

nrl scandal. (2010, November 6). Google Search. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://www.google.com.au/search?q=NRL+scandal

Proszenko, A. (2010, November 7). Monaghan quits NRL, Shamed Raider looks to UK. The Canberra Times, 1,3. Canberra.

Search Result | Tribalytic: Social Market Research Made Simple. (2010, November 6). Tribalytic. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://tribalytic.com/search/?q=Monaghan

What do you want to advertise? (2010, November 6). Facebook. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

This was originally written on June 14, 2010. It has not been edited since then. There may be some grammatical errors and citation related issues.

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The Impact of Jason Akermanis’s Comments on the Western Bulldogs Online Fanbase

On May 20, the Jason Akermanis says gay AFL players should stay in the closet backlash started in response to his column in the Herald Sun. (Akermanis, 2010) The media covered the story on television, in print and online.  AFL fans discussed it on Twitter, created protest pages on Facebook, wiki articles were updated and a lot of people posted about it on the blogosphere.  Management within the AFL and the Western Bulldogs felt compelled to speak out against Jason’s comments.  People talked of reporting Jason to the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity commission.

From a marketing perspective, Akermanis’s opinions were perceived as damaging to the sport and league.  The Western Bulldogs have an association with VicHealth and the Gay and Lesbian Health Association and Akermanis’s comments seemed to contradict and undermine that support. (Walsh, 2010)  The possibility of negative backlash may not have been apparent to the team prior to the article being published as, according to the Sydney Star Observer, team management signed off on the column. (Noonan, 2010)   The size of the backlash and efforts to try to address it can probably be best evidenced by the suspension of Akermanis from the playing field and talking to the media.

Unlike the Melbourne Storm controversy, Akermanis’s comments do not give the appearance of having activated his personal fan base and the fan base for the Western Bulldogs.  There were no media reports of pastors speaking out on Akermanis’s behalf.  His teammates did not support him.  The media did not dismiss his comments, excusing them because of his otherwise excellent on field performance.  Perhaps had Akermanis made these comments in a different country, his comments would have had the potential to be less damaging to the club he played for.  There is also a general view, at least in the United States, that sport teams are run by conservatives who maintain traditional family values.  The assumption is often that sport fans reflect those same values; those that do not chose to follow other popular culture products like movies, television and video games.   If the fanbase for the AFL had actually reflected those underlying assumptions, the situation could have been much more easily ignored and have had the potential to be much less damaging.

The question is how damaging was the situation for the Western Bulldogs online?  How can this be measured? Did the team lose the potential to grow their audience when compared to other AFL teams as a result of Akermanis’s comments?  Who supported Jason and who did not?

The measurement question is probably the most difficult one to address.  Unlike the Melbourne Storm situation, this does not involve a team: The situation involves a specific player.  Liking or adding the team as an interest cannot necessarily be seen as supporting or condemning Jason Akermanis.  People could like the team because they suspended Akermanis for his comments. It is much harder to attribute page views to Akermanis and/or Western Bulldogs supporters who want to find out the situation in order to justify or reaffirm their allegiances.  Almost none of the media coverage and very few people on Twitter indicated that the fanbase was activated in defense of the team and Akermanis.  Thus, a default assumption for any data is that publicity of the situation will activate a larger audience to be against both the club and Akermanis unless contextual evidence suggests otherwise.

Given the measurement difficulties, this paper will nonetheless try to determine how the online community responded to the Jason Akermanis situation and how this reflects back on the Western Bulldogs.  This will be done by looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, bebo, Alexa and a few selected sites.

Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social network in Australia.  Facebook’s advertising data says that there are over nine million users from Australia using the site.  (1)  The following of some Australian based sport teams and leagues are quite large.  The official fan pages for the Queensland Maroons, Brisbane Broncos, Socceroos, AFL and Essendon Bombers all have more than 50,000 fans.

Given the large number of Australians using the network, the official presence of so many clubs and the amount of media attention paid to the service, a response on network was inevitable.   There are several Facebook metrics that can be looked at to ascertain how the controversy effected the Western Bulldogs and Jason Akermanis.  The first way is to compare the relative growth of the Western Bulldogs’ total fans on their fan page compared to other teams during the same page.  A second way is to examine comparative growth of groups that supported Akermanis versus those that condemned his views.  The third way is to compare demographic and geographic distinctions between fans that support Akermanis, people that condemned Akermanis’s views and Western Bulldogs fans.

If the Jason Akermanis controversy hurt the Western Bulldogs on Facebook, it should have resulted in a loss or slower growth in terms of total and percentage of new fans on Facebook when compared to other teams. Data was collected between March 25 and June 10, 2010 regarding the size of the official Facebook fan pages for several AFL teams. (2)

Table 1

In the period between May 3 to May 30, the Western Bulldogs were in the middle of the teams for number of new fans with 1,453. This was almost three times as many as the bottom ranked Geelong Cats who had 519 new fans in that period and a third of new fans of the top ranked Collingwood Magpies who saw an increase of 4,150 fans. An argument could be made that period had too much time preceding it that could have lessened any potential loss with earlier gains. Thus comparing the period between May 30 and June 5 migh be more helpful as Akermanis was suspended on June 1. That new brought additional attention to the column that led to his suspension. During this period, the Western Bulldogs ranked seven out of nine for total new fans with 213 people liking them. This number may not be that accurate as not all teams that had performed worse than them in the previous period were included in this sample. The better comparison could be between May 3 and June 10, 2010 as it is larger and includes the initial controversy and the suspension use. That data set is also more complete. During this longer period, the Western Bulldogs finish in the middle with a gain of 1,812 fans. This compares to the Carlton Blues who on top with 5,185 new fans and the Geelong Cats who are on the bottom with 657 new fans. All of this supports the idea that, when compared to other team’s growth, the Western Bulldogs were not hurt by the controversy.

Another way of looking at this data is to compare percentage growth of new followers. This number compares a club’s ability to get new followers relative to their own performance as opposed to all AFL fans. Using this number, the Western Bulldogs saw the most growth in the period between May 3 and May 30 with a 22.8% increase. The next highest performing club was the Carlton Blues with 19.5%. The Western Bulldogs growth is impressive when compared to the Essendon Bombers who had 4.5% growth, the St. Kilda Saints who had 3.7% and the Adelaide Crows who had 2.1% growth. In the period between May 30 and June 5, the Western Bulldogs were second only to the Gold Coast Football Club: The Bulldogs had a 3.2% increase in new fans compared to the Gold Coast’s 44.9%. The Western Bulldogs saw .8% more growth to the next highest team, the Richmond Tigers who had 2.4%. The Bulldogs percentage growth was roughly 6.4 times as much as the bottom teams, Essendon, St. Kilda and Adelaide who saw between .5 and .7% growth. For the period between June 5 and June 10, the Western Bulldogs finished second for highest percentage growth. The only team that outperformed them was Greater Western Sydney, another expansion team who had just made a lot of news with their signing of Israel Folau. With the exception of the Gold Coast, all teams had one or more percent less growth than the Western Bulldogs. For the overall period between May 3 and June 10, the Western Bulldogs finished on top with 26.9%, 1.1% more growth than the number two team of Carlton and well above that of the last place performer Adelaide who had 3.3% growth in fans on Facebook. Given these numbers where the Bulldogs led in percentage growth on Facebook, it is hard to argue that the Jason Akermanis controversy hurt their Facebook strategy. It might be argued that the team was able to effectively capitalize on Akermanis related traffic on Facebook and their website to convert some fringe fans into Facebook fans.

Beyond the total fans of official pages, there are other interesting metrics that can explain the fan response to the Jason Akermanis controversy. One involves the creation and growth of Facebook groups and fan pages: Facebook easily allows users to create them and they do. Some of the fastest member growing Facebook groups and fan pages are created to get media attention for an issue, to help people spread the word about breaking news and share knowledge, to express disgust with actions taken by institutions or to express allegiance with a person or organization in response to negative publicity. Once the catalyst for the event is out of the news, many of these groups face stagnant growth and become irrelevant having been abandoned by their creators.

While it is not possible to date the creation of a group, the Akermanis controversy likely resulted in the creation of a number of fan pages and groups. These groups have names such as Jason Akermanis, you are a MORON!, Jason Akermanis: Homophobe and complete fuckwit!, Jason Akermanis is a homophobe., Jason Akermanis is a dick, Jason Akermanis Is Totally Gay, Only Homophobes think Jason Akermanis is a homophobe!, Jason Akermanis should be locked and gagged in a closet!, Don’t you hate it when you’re in the shower and Jason Akermanis comes in?, Jason Akermanis is a homophobe., Jason Akermanis is a F*ckwit, Jason Akermanis Can’t Drive A Race Car, JASON AKERMANIS’S “IQ OF A PLANT”, Jason Akermanis slept with me, Jason Akermanis is a coward, and for people who wanna see Jason Akermanis shove his head up his own Ass. There are a number of pro or neutral Akermanis groups on Facebook. They likely predate the controversy. They include groups named Jason Akermanis, Jason Akermanis Biography, Jason Akermanis Autobiography, The Battle Within by Jason Akermanis, jason akermanis is amazing!, The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society, Jason Akermanis is a legend, Jason Akermanis handstand appreciation society, and Jason Akermanis for Brownlow 2008. (3)

Some of the anti-Akermanis groups saw relatively impressive levels of growth. Jason Akermanis is a homophobe. is one of the most popular anti groups. It had 126 members on May 20 and had 547 members by May 24. Membership levels stabilized and it had only 627 members by June 12. Don’t you hate it when you’re in the shower and Jason Akermanis comes in? had 171 fans as of May 22. By May 30, it had 482. Most of the other anti-Jason groups sampled had smaller total populations and smaller membership increases. Some of the anti groups were deleted during this period. One such group was Jason Akermanis Is Totally Gay, which had one member when checked on May 20 and was deleted some time between then and June 10. Jason Akermanis: Homophobe and complete fuckwit! had 118 members on May 20 before being removed from Facebook by May 22.

The pro and neutral Akermanis groups in the sample were all smaller than the two largest anti-Akermanis groups as of June 12, 2010. A pro-Akermanis group ranked third for the total number of fans. In comparison to the anti-Akermanis groups, the growth rate was much smaller. The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society went from 454 members on May 20 to 469 on June 12. Jason Akermanis is a legend saw no growth during that period, continuing to have 201 total members. Jason Akermanis handstand appreciation society saw a growth of one, going from 88 to 89 during that period. Jason Akermanis at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/107712129252191 is the group that probably saw the biggest percentage increase of clearly established fan pages. It went from 56 fans on May 20 to 165 on June 12. Jason Akermanis at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/301148780410 went from 307 fans on May 20 to 382 on June 12. Growth levels for the pro and neutral groups are level compared to the anti groups. The data suggests that people did not respond to the Akermanis controversy by rushing out to assert their support of him and his views by joining communities about him on Facebook. The data also suggests that the anti-sentiment regarding Akermanis was not sustained for a long period of time and that people were not scared to affiliate with Akermanis, despite people’s negative attitudes towards him.

Another way of evaluating the effect of the Akermanis controversy on the Western Bulldogs is to compare the characteristics of Western Bulldog fans, Akermanis supporters and Akermanis detractors. Facebook shows the network membership for people who belong to many groups and fan pages, which allows such a comparison to take place. On June 13, 2010, a list of all the members of the Western Bulldogs official fan page was pulled. While Facebook shows the page as having 6,819 fans, it only provided names and network membership for 3,343 people. Of these fans, 188 or 5.6% belonged to a network. A membership list for Jason Akermanis is a homophobe. (4) was also pulled. As of June 13, 2010, the group had 627 members, of which Facebook lists 428. Of the 428, 28 or 6.5% belong to a network. A membership list for The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society was pulled. As of June 13, the group had 469 members of which 337 were on the member list. Of these, 27 or 8.0% belonged to a network.

Networks are Facebook created groupings that early in the site’s history allowed people to easily filter content to people who shared an affiliation with other users. These networks cover three broad general categories: Places of employment, secondary schools and high schools. The pro-Akermanis people belong to thirteen networks not shared by detractors or Western Bulldogs fans. That means 48% of Akermanis fans do not belong to a network that is shared by Western Bulldogs fans and highly suggests that Akermanis’s fanbase largely is independent of the Bulldogs. Eight anti-Akermanis fans or 27% of that population belong to networks not represented by the Western Bulldogs or Akermanis supporters. This suggests that Akermanis detractors likely come from with in the Western Bulldogs fanbase.

The differences between Akermanis detractors and Western Bulldogs fans are really clear when network membership is sorted by type (secondary school, university, company) and then tabulated. (5) 78.6% of all Akermanis detractors that list a network belong to a university related one. This compares to 50.0% for Akermanis supporters and 48.6% for Bulldogs supporters. Bulldog supporter network membership suggests that the club’s goal of building a barracker base from the working class has been successful. The pattern of network membership may also suggest that Akermanis detractors are older than the club’s current supporter base. Given these two conditions, the Bulldogs are likely to be unaffected by the detractors as they represent a demographically distinct group that the club is not marketing to.

Twitter
Twitter is a popular microblogging platform. Many teams, players and fansites have established a presence on the site. Australian sport fans are also actively using Twitter to discuss their club’s performance, celebrity athlete related gossip and to find other sport news.

There are several possible ways to monitor the impact of the Akermanis controversy as it pertains to Western Bulldogs. Sadly, the most important Twitter metrics are not accessible as the author did not get the data in the moment. (6) These include total number of followers before and after the controversy for the official account and total number of tweets featuring certain keywords. The counting the total number of Tweets by the official account was also not done, as it was believed that this data would not have meaningful results. Unlike the Melbourne Storm controversy, the focus was on a player where the media and fan attention appeared to be on him to the exclusion of his club. Given that, the Bulldogs did not have to respond or change their practices in their official fan communication channels and monitoring their Tweet volume would be unlikely to provide any insight into the fan response to the controversy.

As the three of the most popular Twitter metrics are not available or not relevant, the question is what other metrics can be used? One Twitter analysis tool that can be useful in this case is Twitter Venn. (7) The service creates Venn diagrams based on keywords that a user selects. The service uses Twitter’s search API to find Tweets that mention the two or three teams the user selected, determines if the terms were used together or independently, counts the total Tweets and then creates the Venn. (Clark, n.d.) Using this service on June 11, a Venn diagram (Figure 1) was created. The keywords chosen were based on the goal of trying to exclude irrelevant tweets, such as people talking about their pet Bulldogs or other teams named the Bulldogs. Phrases such as gay, homosexual and homophobic were also not included as their usage extends beyond this controversy and would pick up a lot of irrelevant data.

Figure 1. Twitter Venn. This Venn diagram generated by Twitter Venn demonstrates the lack of overlap between use of Akermanis and Western Bulldogs.

On Twitter, people who mentioned Jason Akermanis did not mention his club affiliation, instead referencing the AFL, gay and other words that indicate the controversy involving the column he published. Based on this, it can be concluded that on Twitter, Akermanis’s comments did not result in rage directed at his club.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the first sources of information that many people turn to when a news story breaks. Articles on the site often provide background information and context to an event, and include a summary and links of breaking news. Wikipedia also has an excellent search engine optimization. When people go to Google or other search engines to find out what is happening, Wikipedia often appears as the first, second or third result. Thus, an increase in an article’s views should be expected when controversy happens.

In terms of the Jason Akermanis and Wikipedia, the way to measure the controversy as it impacts the Western Bulldogs would be to compare the total page views between those two articles. If the controversy reflected more upon Akermanis than his team, the expectation is the page view spike would be higher. The chart below contains traffic information to those two articles for the period between May 1 and June 8, 2010. (8) To give perspective to Akermanis’s situation as it pertains to athlete interest connecting to club interest, data for the Israel Folau, Brisbane Broncos and Western Sydney Football Club articles have been included on the chart. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Article Views on Wikipedia by Date. Graph shows total views of selected Wikipedia articles between May 1 and June 10, 2010.

The Jason Akermanis controversy did not result in increase in attention for the Western Bulldogs: Total page views by date have a correlation of .280, which suggests that interest in the two is not related. This is much different than the situation that exists for Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney: The two articles move in tandem in terms of total article views by date with a correlation of .943. (9)

There are two other aspects of Wikipedia worth analyzing as they pertain to understanding the fan community’s actions in response to the controversy. One is the total edits. The second is the location of those edits. For total edits, controversial and high visibility stories tend to lead to an increase in editing. For less controversial news stories, where there isn’t much new information and the topic is not one people are passionate about, there tend to be fewer peaks in editing. Below is a chart (Figure 3) that compares the total number of edits to the Jason Akermanis, Western Bulldogs, Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney articles.

Figure 3. Total Edits Between May 1 and June 8, 2010 for Selected Wikipedia Articles.

The Jason Akermanis controversy resulted in people editing the article about him. The total number of daily edits does not mirror total number of daily edits to the Western Bulldogs. This continues to suggest that people viewed Akermanis’s actions independently of his club. This contrasts with the Israel Folau situation, where the total number of edits appears to be a bit more connected.

The Western Bulldogs are based in a Melbourne suburb. An argument could be made that the Western Bulldogs should be concerned about maintaining or developing a fanbase in their local area; they do not need to worry about the fan community outside their geographic home. The only way to measure the local fan community response on Wikipedia expressed by editing an article is to use geolocation for IP addresses that have edited an article. As the total edits by date chart shows, there have been very few edits to the Western Bulldogs article since the Jason Akermanis controversy broke. Of the five edits made to the Western Bulldogs article, two edits have been made by users who have not logged in and have a visible IP address. Neither of these edits references the controversy. Both edits are from Melbourne. (10) This suggests that the controversy did not impact their local fanbase.

The edit history for the Jason Akermanis article stands in stark contrast to the Western Bulldogs article. It has a lot more edits and almost all of the non-logged in edits involved editing the article to reference the stay in the closet controversy. There were 29 total edits made by 14 non-logged in users. Of these edits, four are from Melbourne, one each from Camberwell and Sandringham in Victoria, two are from Adelaide, three are from Sydney and three are international. Only 42 percent of the edits to the Jason Akermanis article originate from the Western Bulldog’s geographic home. Determining what this means is more problematic. The most obvious conclusion is that the offended population were geographically dispersed and were more interested in the topic because of the homophobic aspects than because of their interest in Akermanis and the Western Bulldogs. These edits should not be seen as being committed by a base who will punish the Western Bulldogs by not watching games on television or in person.

Bebo
Bebo was a popular social networking site in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Its popularity has slipped in the past year but there is still a large population of AFL fans on the site. It probably ranks amongst the top ten most popular social networks inside Australia
Bebo allows people to search for keywords and interest that appear in people’s profiles, in videos, descriptions of bands, groups, applications and skins. For profiles, the general assumption is that people do not update interests listed on them regularly after they register. Doing so generally requires a strong desire to associate or disassociate with a person or organization. This desire has to overcome general antipathy towards updating. Thus, interest levels remain relatively stable unless something happens that causes a huge emotional response.

What does this mean for the Western Bulldogs? Did the Jason Akermanis situation reach that point, causing people to want to associate or disassociate with the team? As of March 17, there were 93 people who listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. (11) By June 8, 2010, this number had increased to 95. There does not appear to have been an attitude shift that causes many people to want to change their public allegiances. The small increase may mean something when compared to Melbourne Storm who saw zero interest listing growth during a similar period prior to and after a major controversy. (Hale, 2010)

While no bebo video data is available for the Western Bulldogs prior to June 9, video data is available for the Brisbane Lions. On May 1, 2010, a search was done of videos on bebo for the “Brisbane Lions.” This is a team that Jason Akermanis played for. On that date, there were 74 videos which mentioned the Brisbane Lions. Three of these videos referenced an Australian soccer league team. The rest were about the AFL team. Of these 71 videos, only one contained Akermanis in the title or description. As of May 1, it had only eleven views. When the video viewing statistics were check on June 9, 2010, there were still only 11 views: The Jason Akermanis controversy has not translated into people seeking out video content on bebo featuring him to watch.

There are no groups about Jason Akermanis. This contrasts to Facebook, where there are several that cover several different views of the player. The Jason Akermanis did not inspire anyone on bebo to create any anti-Jason group, which suggests either antipathy towards the situation or fans not being particularly active on bebo any more.

The only other large player/club controversy that occurred during this time period involved Israel Falou, who switched from the NRL and Brisbane Broncos to the AFL and Greater Western Sydney. To put Jason Akermanis’s fan community as it related to the Western Bulldogs on bebo into context, it is worth comparing the two players. The following data was gathered on June 8, 2010.

Table 2

Bebo interests suggest that Israel Folau is much more important to the Brisbane Broncos fan community than Jason Akermanis is. Jason Akermanis’s comments look like, based on these numbers, that they would have less potential to harm the club than Israel Folau’s desertion to the AFL.

Website Traffic and Demographics
There are primarily three services which track website traffic. They are Alexa, Quantcast and Compete. (12) Each one has something different to offer in terms of how they measure and information they provide about a site. None of these sites are perfect in that they cannot convey a completely accurate picture of a website’s traffic or the demographic composition of visitors to the site. Despite these deficiencies, using their data can begin to give an idea to the fan response by looking for traffic movement out of sync with other teams and if there was a major difference in audiences visiting the Bulldogs site.

Alexa ranks websites based on the amount of traffic they get. It measures traffic using a user-installed toolbar coupled with other data. (13) (alberto, 2009) They can differentiate traffic based on nation and will provide ranking information by country for sites that get a majority of their traffic from specific countries. Their data is also updated daily. This makes them more useful than Compete and Quantcast in that Alexa provides information about Australian sites and updates daily so that daily traffic patterns can be examined.

On June 5, June 8 and June 9, 2010, the international and Australian ranking on Alexa was recorded for all official AFL club websites. (14) This is not ideal, as it does not include traffic prior to and immediately after the Jason Akermanis situation. Still, it can provide a picture of what was happening 16 days after the incident broke, a few days after news of Akermanis’s suspension was announced.

Table 3.

The only team with less traffic to their site is Greater Western Sydney, a team that has not started playing in the AFL yet. While only three of the seventeen teams saw an increase in Australian traffic ranking from June 5 to June 9, (15) the decrease in rank between those dates for the Western Bulldogs was the most extreme: It dropped almost 2,000 places. This suggests that something is going on to depress traffic to the Bulldogs when compared to other teams.

Quantcast and Alexa both provide demographic information about visitors to a site. Quantcast can directly measure a site’s traffic and build a better demographic picture if a site inserts Quantcast’s code into their site. (Quantcast Corporation, 2008) Quancast’s data tends to be American centric and does not always provide a picture of international visitors unless a site is Quantified. Alexa’s demographic data comes from a survey users complete when they install the toolbar. (alberto, 2009)

Bearing in mind that the Quantcast’s description is based on American visitors, the site characterizes visitors to the Western Bulldogs’s site (16) as female, middle aged, Hispanic, have children, make between $30,000 and $60,000 a year and are college graduates. This information was based on all of May 2010, including the nineteen days before the controversy broke out. Alexa, which has much more data from Australian users, characterizes visitors to the Western Bulldogs site as generally between the ages of 18 to 24, male, college graduates, childless and visiting the site from work.

The Geelong Cats and North Melbourne Kangaroos are closest to the Western Bulldogs in terms of amount of traffic. They are also based in the same metro area. Thus, it makes sense to compare their audience with the of the Bulldogs to determine if the there are demographic differences between the clubs that could be attributed to a shift in viewing habits as a result of the Akermanis controversy.

Quantcast characterizes visitors to the Geelong Cats site (17) as female, extremely young, Asian, having no children, making between $30,000 and $60,000 a year and being college graduates. Quantcast characterizes North Melbourne Kangaroos website visitors (18) as being split evenly amongst both genders, teenaged, Asian, having kids in their household, affluent and possessing a graduate degree.

Alexa characterizes Geelong Cats website visitors as being between 18 and 24, male, having a graduate degree, having children, and visiting the site from bother home and work. Alexa characterizes North Melbourne Kangaroos visitors as between 18-24, male, having a college degree, childless and visiting the site from home.

There does not appear to be a demographically homogenous group visiting the websites of all three clubs. The major difference appears to be the racial make up of visitors, with the Western Bulldogs over representing in Hispanics. It would be difficult to make a claim, based on available website demographic data, that the Akermanis situation changed the composition of the fanbase.

43 Things, Blogger and Other Small Networks
While smaller and less influential sites like 43 Things, Blogger and BlackPlanet have tiny populations, they are worth monitoring as they can often be one of the first signs of a major public relations problem online that can no longer be controlled. Twitter and Facebook can often be very temporal: Things happen in the moment and are quickly forgotten. Those sites are not set up to record fan responses. Other sites, either because they are inactive, allow for longer posting, have greater visibility to people outside the network the content exists on or because influential fans from those networks may have greater crossover to a wider selection of sites, can hurt a club or league’s reputation. The content does not go away. There are influential people on some of those sites that can spread the message to a totally different audience with a different demographic profile. Also, when you’re talking to some one in a much smaller group, there tends to be more trust and greater potential for people to believe what their friends are saying. While a person reading one hundred tweets by nominal acquaintances may be able to forget and move on as things move so fast, in a one on one environment, the chances are the smaller group may have bigger problems letting go and moving on.
43things is a goal setting site that is relatively popular in Australia. Prior to the Jason Akermanis controversy, there was one goal related to the Western Bulldogs: See the Western Bulldogs win the grand final. One person was trying to accomplish this goal. Since the controversy, there has been no change in people creating new goals related to the club, nor in the number of people trying to accomplish the existing goal. There have been no goals, either positive or negative, created related to Jason Akermanis. This mirrors the non-action taken by Brisbane Broncos, Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney fans who added no goals in response to the change in code news for Israel Folau.

BlackPlanet is a small social network marketed at African Americans in the United States. It has a small community of Australians on it. The major sport league that Australians are interested on the site is the NRL. Prior to and after the controversy, no one listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. After the controversy, no one updated their profiles to include Jason Akermanis as an interest.

Blogger is a blogging site powered by Google. It is one of the more popular free blogging services in Australia. Users can create a profile on the site, which is used to link their different blogs and comments on one page. The profile page includes an interest field that users can fill out. As of January 16, twelve people listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. This number only changed by one as of June 4 and June 8, 2010, with 13 people listing the team as interest. No one listed Jason Akermanis as an interest on blogger as of June 4, 2010. It is unlikely that the Jason Akermanis situation resulted in any behavioral change in terms of public allegiances shown on profiles for the Western Bulldogs.

Care2 is a small social network marketed at people who want to make the world a better place. It hosts blogs, groups, discussions, personal profiles, petitions and photos. Care2 has a small population of Australian sport fans using it. As the site is geared towards making a difference and addressing social problems, it is a bit surprising that Akermanis does not show up when searching (19) site profiles, discussions, groups or petitions. As of June 11, the Western Bulldogs are only mentioned four times in blogs and only included on one person’s profile. While this data was gathered three weeks after the controversy, it seems unlikely that with no mentions of Akermanis, the small community on Care2 turned against the team. ecademy is a niche social networking site that is an alternative to LinkedIn for professionals. With no earlier benchmarks, a June 11, 2010 profile search (20) turned up similar results to Care2: No one listed the team or Jason Akermanis as an interest on their profile. It is unlikely that the controversy had an impact on the small AFL community on the site.

Wikia is an extremely popular wiki hosting company (21) that allows anyone to freely create a wiki. They are home to three small wikis dedicated to the AFL and Australian rules football. (22) These wikis are small and not very comprehensive. Two were created prior to the controversy and one was created after it. None have had any edits to the Western Bulldogs or Jason Akermanis article. Coincidentally, there have been no edits related to Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney. The Wikia community for the AFL was clearly not activated in response to the Akermanis or Folau situations. This suggests that the community is either inactive or more interested in historical on field play rather than off field player antics.

Conclusion
Based on fan behavior online, Jason Akermanis’s comments did not help the player build his personal brand. He upset some fans in the short term, and motivated people to create long time reminders of views that they consider problematic. Very few fans rushed to his defense by affiliating with him or creating groups to defend his position. While the controversy may be problematic for Akermanis, the controversy was less problematic for his club, the Western Bulldogs. Fans did not link the club and player on Wikipedia or Twitter. People did not remove their Western Bulldogs interest on sites such as Blogger or change their behavior goals on sites like 43 Things. Inactive Bulldogs fans were not motivated to become active in order to express disgust for the team. The people that had problems with Akermanis were demographically distinct from Bulldogs fans on Facebook. The controversy harmed Akermanis but it did not harm his team’s image.

References
Akermanis, J. (2010, May 20). “Stay in the closet, Jason Akermanis tells homosexuals.” Herald Sun. Newspaper. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/stay-in-the-closet-jason-akermanis-tells-homosexuals/story-e6frf9ix-1225868871934

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

Clark, J. (n.d.). “Twitter Venn.” Twitter Venn. Retrieved June 11, 2010, from http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php

Hale, L. (2010, May 20). “Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy.” Ozzie Sport. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/05/online-activity-in-the-wake-of-the-melbourne-storm-controversy/

Noonan, A. (2010, May 27). “AFL closet furore continues.” Sydney Star Observer. Newspaper. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2010/05/27/afl-closet-furore-continues/25965

Quantcast Corporation. (2008, June 28). “Cookie Corrected Audience Data, Leveraging Multiple Data Sources to
Calibrate Unique Cookie, Machine, and People Counts in a Direct-Measurement Media Economy.” Quantcast. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Cookie+to+People+Translation+Overview

Walsh, C. (2010, May 21). “Aker’s viewpoint bizarre: Roos.” The Australian. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/akers-viewpoint-bizarre-roos/story-e6frg7mf-1225869370860

Footnotes

1. Facebook’s advertising page is located at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ .  As of June 11, 2010, it said that there were 9,300,240 people from Australia.
2. The urls for the fan pages in this sample are https://www.facebook.com/adelaidecrows, https://www.facebook.com/AFL, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brisbane-Lions/21301860172, https://www.facebook.com/OfficialCarltonFC, https://www.facebook.com/collingwoodfc, https://www.facebook.com/Essendon, https://www.facebook.com/fremantlefootballclub, https://www.facebook.com/GeelongCatsInsider, https://www.facebook.com/GoldCoastFC, https://www.facebook.com/teamgws, https://www.facebook.com/hawthornfc, https://www.facebook.com/MELBOURNEfc, https://www.facebook.com/northkangaroos, https://www.facebook.com/portadelaidefootballclub, https://www.facebook.com/Richmond.FC, https://www.facebook.com/stkfc, https://www.facebook.com/sydneyswans, and https://www.facebook.com/pages/West-Coast-Eagles/38862387223, https://www.facebook.com/Western.Bulldogs
   .
3. The following is a complete list of URLs for Jason Akermanis related Facebook fan pages and groups that the author looked at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/107712129252191, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/105738419448658, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/373300971735, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/376142636801, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/301148780410, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Biography/106142142741832, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Autobiography/106446502709782, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-you-are-a-MORON/109009685810123, https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Battle-Within-by-Jason-Akermanis/110570445624262, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Homophobe-and-complete-fuckwit/105067262872425, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124872100865630, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118380594866779, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118537708183794, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118573961511057, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=344061166761, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20900401086, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10308061363, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19647855868, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128825660465576, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16522463154, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109095775801131, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18564050741, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21877556009, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123972501889, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=107444465957654, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38642639632, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-slept-with-me/115552025153010, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-is-an-idiot/125326927493237, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-is-a-coward/105337389512086,  and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-you-hate-it-when-youre-in-the-shower-and-Jason-Akermanis-comes-in/124465230905493 .
4. The group can be found at https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118380594866779 .
5. The following table lists the network, the type of network and the total members from the three different groups looked at.
   

   Network	Type	Supporters	Detractors	Bulldogs	Total
   Victoria AU	University	2	1	15	18
   Monash	University	2	8	7	17
   University of Melbourne	University	2	1	13	16
   RMIT	University	0	0	15	15
   State Government of Victoria	Company	0	0	11	11
   Deakin	University	0	2	8	10
   La Trobe University	University	2	0	7	9
   Westbourne Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	4	4
   Bendigo Senior Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	3	3
   Curtin	University	0	2	1	3
   Haileybury College	Secondary school	1	0	2	3
   MacKillop College	Secondary school	1	0	2	3
   St. Paul’s College	Secondary school	0	0	3	3
   University of Sydney	University	0	2	1	3
   Catholic College Bendigo	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Essendon Keilor College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Hoppers Crossing Secondary College	Secondary school	1	0	1	2
   Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School	Secondary school	1	0	1	2
   James Cook	University	0	1	1	2
   Methodist Ladies’ College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   National Australia Bank	Company	0	0	2	2
   St. Bernard’s College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Sunbury College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Swinburne	University	0	0	2	2
   Telstra	Company	0	1	1	2
   UNSW	University	1	1	0	2
   Whitefriars College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Academy of Mary Immaculate	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   ANZ	Company	0	0	1	1
   Australian National	University	0	0	1	1
   Bacchus Marsh College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ballarat & Clarendon College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ballarat High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Benedictine IL	University	0	0	1	1
   Binghamton	University	1	0	0	1
   Bowness High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Box Hill High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Braemar College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Burnside State High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Cairns State High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Catholic Regional College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Central Queensland	University	0	0	1	1
   Chairo Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Charles Campbell Secondary School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Charles Darwin	University	0	0	1	1
   Charles Sturt University	University	1	0	0	1
   Chelmer Valley High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Clonard College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Computer Sciences Corporation	Company	0	0	1	1
   Copperfield College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   De La Salle College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Elsevier	Company	0	0	1	1
   Emmaus College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Esperance Senior High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   FedEx	Company	0	0	1	1
   Firbank Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ford Motor Company	Company	0	0	1	1
   FRANCE 24	Company	0	0	1	1
   Geelong Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Gisborne Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Governor Stirling High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Griffith	University	0	1	0	1
   Guilford Young College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Gymnase de Beaulieu	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Heathfield High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Hellyer College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   IESEG School of Management	University	0	0	1	1
   Illawarra Sports High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   John Willcock Senior High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Jones Lang LaSalle	Company	0	0	1	1
   Kantonsschule Büelrain	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Karingal Park Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Keilor Downs College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   KPMG	Company	0	0	1	1
   Launceston College	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Lowther Hall Anglican School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Macquarie	University	0	0	1	1
   Melbourne High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Merrimac State High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Metso	Company	1	0	0	1
   Mildura Senior College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mincom	Company	0	0	1	1
   Mirrabooka Senior High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Mount Carmel College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mowbray College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nazareth College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Newcastle	University	0	1	0	1
   Newcomb High	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Northern Beaches Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Norwood Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nowra Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nowra High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Optus	Company	0	0	1	1
   Padua College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Patterson River Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Presentation College Windsor	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Sacred Heart AU	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Sacred Heart College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Salesian College Rupertswood	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   San Diego State	University	0	0	1	1
   Smithfield State High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St Albans Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St. Aloysius College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St. Thomas	University	0	0	1	1
   Star Of The Sea	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Star of the Sea College	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Strathmore Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   T. D. Williamson	Company	0	0	1	1
   Tasmania	University	0	0	1	1
   The British School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   The Friends’ School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   The Peninsula School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Trinity Catholic School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   University of New England	University	0	1	0	1
   University of Peradeniya	University	0	0	1	1
   University of Zimbabwe	University	1	0	0	1
   UT Arlington	University	0	0	1	1
   UWA	University	1	0	0	1
   Webber Academy	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Wellesley	University	0	1	0	1
   Westpac Banking	Company	0	0	1	1
   William Angliss Institute of TAFE	University	0	0	1	1
   Wodonga Senior Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Wycheproof College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Total	Secondary school	12	5	80	97
   Total	University	13	22	82	117
   Total	Company	1	1	26	28
   Total	26	28	188	242
   Percentage	Secondary school	46.2%	17.9%	42.6%	40.1%
   Percentage	University	50.0%	78.6%	43.6%	48.3%
   Percentage	Company	3.8%	3.6%	13.8%	11.6%

6. Data regarding the comparative size of total Twitter followers for the Western Bulldogs was initially gathered on June 1, almost a week after the controversy first started.  Twitter follower counts for other official club accounts were not recorded on that.  This further hampers the ability to make comparisons between teams.
7. Twitter Venn is located at http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php .
8. Article view information is provided by http://stats.grok.se/ .
9. The correlation between the Brisbane Broncos article and the Israel Folau article is .155.  The relationship between page views for each article is close to random.
10. whatismyipaddress.com/ was used to determine the geolocation of IP addresses.
11. This number came from visiting http://www.bebo.com/c/search? , clicking on the people tab and searching for “Western Bulldogs.”
12. Compete is not being looked at here because they have not updated their data to include May.  They also do not provide free demographic details about visitors to sites that they track.
13. It is important to note that this tool does not measure direct traffic to a site.  Rather, it involves sampling traffic to the site to get an approximate for this his compares to other sites.
14. The list of Alexa pages checked include: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/afc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/afl.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lions.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/carltonfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/collingwoodfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/essendonfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fremantlefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/teamgws.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hawthornfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/melbournefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kangaroos.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/portadelaidefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/richmondfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/saints.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sydneyswans.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/westcoasteagles.com.au , and http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/westernbulldogs.com.au .
15. There are almost certainly cyclical patterns to the checking of AFL club websites: People check them on game and around game day to keep up with the team.  They are unlikely to check club websites when there is no club news and teams are not playing.
16. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/westernbulldogs.com.au#demographics
17. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/gfc.com.au#demographics
18. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/kangaroos.com.au#demographics
19. The url for the search that was confused is http://www.care2.com/find/site#q=%22Jason+Akermanis%22 .
20. The ecademy search can be found at http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=member&q=%22Western+Bulldogs%22&op=Search+People
21. As of June 11, 2010, Alexa ranks Wikia as the 312th most popular site on the Internet.  Compete estimates that the site gets around 3.2 million visitors a month.
22. The wikis are http://afl.wikia.com/wiki/Australian_Football_League_Wiki , http://aussierules.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page , and  http://aflpedia.wikia.com/wiki/AFL_Wiki .

Related Posts:

• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy
• A social media/web snapshot of Collingwood, Hawthorn and Port Adelaide
• Which AFL team do Canberrans support in the Grand Final?
• Data absent context can change the meaning: Did Julia Gillard hurt the Bulldogs?

A copy of this can be found in PDF form at : ozziesport.com/storm.pdf .  The pdf version that includes footnotes that explain the methodology used and contain additional links.

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Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

By Laura Hale, University of Canberra

On April 22, 2010, the news of salary cap violations on the part of the Melbourne Storm broke online in such publications as the Fox Sports, on television including ABC news and on multiple social networks including Facebook and Twitter. By April 23, the news was available in various print publications including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. During the news coverage, NRL fans learned that the team had been fined $1.8 million, stripped of two premiereships and were not eligible to earn points towards 2010’s premiership. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010) The team was being punished for salary cap violations over the past five years, where the total cap violation in that period was $1.7 million with $400,000 of that total cap violation occurring in 2009. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010)

Early in the coverage of the Melbourne Storm, several issues were discussed including the impact this would have on the fan base for the team, the subsequent economic fallout for Storm and other clubs in the league, and if the players would try to leave the club or lower their performance level. The consequences that people feared have yet to bear out: The fan base for the Melbourne Storm has grown, attendance has not fallen, membership is up and players have not left the team and the team continues to win.

This article will examine the online response to the Melbourne Storm controversy. Specifically, it will look at the interest patterns on several networks, follow patterns on Twitter and Facebook, and activity levels on 43things, wikis and Yahoo!Groups. It will prove that, on the whole, the controversy has not eroded the online fanbase for the team and has resulted in an increased profile for the team in ways can have a net positive for the team and their sponsors.

Profile Interest

One way to quickly gage online interest for a team is to check the number of people who list them as an interest on social networks that include that option. The level of interest on a network will, in general, increase over time. Including an interest is a rather passive activity that most people do at the time that they signup on a service. They may update their interests once a year when they do an overhaul on their profile. Other factors may result in an update of interests, most notably a desire to associate or disassociate with certain people and organizations. The latter can generally require a certain amount of rage and disillusionment and does not happen that often. For adding interests, it can require a certain degree of wanting to stand in solidarity with some one or thing in the face of perceived oppression. Adding or removing an interest will generally require a large emotional response in people to motivate them to change their interests on social networks where an individual has not been active in the past six months. These conditions mean that numbers for interests are relatively stable or increase. A big shift downward is possible but unlikely.

Did the Melbourne Storm controversy result in people being motivated to update their interests to include or exclude the team? Yes and no, many people added them as an interest on Facebook but the numbers remained level across several other networks.

As of January 9, 2010, 17,020 had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest on Facebook. By May 9, 2010, this number had increased to 41,240, or 24,220 new people. From January 9 to May 9, 2010, there was also an increase of roughly 120 fans within fifty miles of Hobart adding the team as an interest, going from less than 20 to 140. Canberra saw a similar increase in fans, going from 140 on January 9 to 1,020 by May 9, 2010, an increase of 880 new people listing the team as an interest. For fans within fifty miles of Cranbourne, there was an increase of 5,540 fans going from 7,140 fans on January 9 to 12,580 fans on May 9, 2010. Some of this increase on Facebook can be possibly attributed to a change in Facebook in mid-April, where people were encouraged to add their interests as likes of fanpages and vice versa. (Albanesius, 2010) It cannot entirely explain the shift as the official Melbourne Storm page is a user page, not a fan page so the interest to liking will not be automatically converted. At the same time, the number of people listing the team as an interest is roughly ten times as many who follow the Storm’s official Facebook profile and suggests that interest listing is independent of following the official team presence.

In addition to the Melbourne Storm interest on Facebook, there have been two new interests related to the storm created in the wake of the controversy: “Shame On You Melbourne Storm” with fewer than twenty people listing it as an interest, and “Sucked In Melbourne Storm Haha” with 3,240 people listing it as an interest. The latter definitely connects to a Facebook fanpage with the same name, which has 8,432 people who like it.

While Facebook saw an explosion in growth of people listing the team as an interest, other sites allowing interest listing on profiles remained stagnant or saw limited growth. This includes bebo, where there has been no change as of April 28 and May 9 from 402 people that was originally recorded on March 18, 2010. Blogger saw some growth for the number of people listing the team as an interest. As of January 18, 2010, four people had listed the team. By May 9, 2010, six people had listed them as an interest. As the time frame is wider than that of bebo, it might be possible to account for the increase as a pre-season boost, rather than in response to the controversy. Either way, this was an increase of fifty percent for new people listing the team as an interest.

LiveJournal saw no growth in people listing the team as an interest between January 10 and May 9, 2010. Of the 25 LiveJournal accounts listing the Melbourne Storm as an interest, only five have updated since the controversy broke. LiveJournal’s clones including Dreamwidth, Blurty and DeadJournal also saw no growth as of May 9. This contrasts to the Brisbane Broncos on LiveJournal, where one person removed the team as an interest during a similar period. Dreamwidth had two users listing the team as an interest as of January 9, Blurty had one user as of January 9, and DeadJournal had one user as of December 23, 2009. None of the people on LiveJournal’s clones who list the Storm as an interest have updated their journals since the controversy happened. The most recent updates occurred on Dreamwidth, taking place in early March 2010. The other account last updated in April 2009. The Blurty account last updated in November 2005 and the DeadJournal account last updated in January 2006.

One or two smaller niche networks have limited interest for specific teams or where people only list the NRL as an interest. This includes BlackPlanet, generally targeted at African Americans inside the United States. There was one person who listed the NRL as an interest on the network as of February 15, 2010. This has not changed as of May 9. Care2 is a social networked targeted at people who wish to make the world a better place. As of March 20, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. This changed by May 9, when three people listed the team as an interest. Given the names, limited profiles and join dates, it is possible that these accounts are all tied to one individual. Gaia Online is a small, niche network for role players. As of March 11, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. There is interest in the NRL on the network as people listed the Brisbane Lions, Canberra Raiders, Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters as interests. There has not been any change for any of these teams as of May 9. The limited growth and lack of pull back could suggest that larger interest in the NRL has not been diminished on smaller networks as a result of the controversy.

Wiki Activity

Wikis are, at their most basic, web sites where visitors can easily edit the content of the site. Sometimes, there are limits to who can edit put in place by the creator of a wiki. These include requiring users to register or confirm an e-mail before they edit, or to get their account approved by the admin before they can edit. Some wikis have policies when breaking news happen or an article gets trolled to lock down the article so only registered users can edit or wiki admins can edit. The culture of editing on specific wikis thus develops around the who can edit process as locking down wikis to prevent edits can effect the frequency that an article is updated.

For comprehensive wiki articles, the ideal is to have to have editors who approach the topic from different perspectives, where there is inherent conflict in the content and perspective being presented. If this situation does not exist, an article can be highjacked by one or two editors who seek to push their own perspective. The more edits and people involved in contributing to the article, the less likely the article will be biased. This also makes vandalism less problematic as people are incentivized to quickly remove that material.

Wikis can be a good tool for gauging interest in a particular topic over time as most wiki software keeps a record of all edits to a page. For some of the big wikis, like Wikipedia, data also exists for how many views an article has over a certain time period. This can help track more passive community interest in a topic.

Wikipedia’s English language article about the Melbourne Storm is probably the most visited wiki article about the team and appears third in Google’s search results for the team. The article, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on May 23, 2004. As of May 9, 2010, the article had 1,732 total edits made to it. The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm broke on April 22, 2010. 1,471 of the edits were made prior to that. In the period between the article’s creation and the day before the controversy broke, an average of .681 edits per day were made to the article. In the eighteen-day period since the controversy broke, an average of 14.5 edits per day were made to the article. The vast majority of these edits were made in the first three days, with 90 edits made on April 22, 56 edits made on April 23 and 69 edits made on April 24. On April 24, in response to repeated vandalism, the article was semi-protected; this meant that only registered users who had confirmed their e-mail could edit the article. The protection had the effect of reducing the total number of daily edits to the article. After that, peak editing days included April 26 and May 3 with seven edits, and April 25 and May 5 with six edits. There were zero edits on April 28, May 6, May 7 and May 9. The controversy certainly caused an increase in the number of edits. If the day that the controversy broke and the next two days are excluded, the average number of daily edits is 3.06 edits per day. This is still higher than the period prior to the controversy and the trend will probably continue at least until the end of the season.

The article views per day mirrors the total edits by day. Based on data provided by Henrick (2010, May 1 and May 9), there is a correlation of .904 between the total daily edits and the total daily page views. According to Henrick (2010, May 1) during April 2010, the article was viewed a total of 49,540 times. Of these views, 40,355 views were between April 22, when the story broke, and April 30. The peak day for visits was on April 22, when the article was viewed 14,800 times. The average page views between April 22 and April 30 was 4,482 views per day. If this period is extended out to include data provided by Henrick (2010, May 9) for May 1 to May 8, the average views per day is 2,700. If the three days around when the controversy first broke are excluded, the average edits per day drops to 1,143. This stands in contrast to the period between April 1 and April 21 where the average page views per day was 438. The above average page views trend appears to be continuing. There has not been a decrease in overall interest in the Melbourne Storm on English Wikipedia.

In addition to the English language article about the Melbourne Storm on Wikipedia, there are articles in two other languages: French and Italian. The French language article, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on March 1, 2006. Since the controversy started on April 22 and May 8, there have been 35 total edits to the article. Unlike the English language article, total edits per day peaked on April 24, 2010 with 19 with the second highest editing day occurring on April 23 with 7. The average total edits per day during this period was 2.1. In April, prior to the controversy, the average edits per day was zero. Also unlike the English language article, it was not locked because of vandalism. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) peak views per day happened on April 23 and April 24 with 59. The next day with the greatest number of views in the period between April 22 and May 8 is May 8 with 34. The average viewed per day in the April 22 to May 8 period was 17.4 and the average viewed per day in April prior to the controversy was 3.4. The correlation between the total edits per day and views per day in the period between April 1 and May 8 is .7740. The French Wikipedia article saw an increase that was proportionally bigger than the English article but the total views and edits were much smaller on the French article.

The Italian language Wikipedia article, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on December 21, 2007. The article had two edits in 2008 and one in 2009. Since the controversy broke on April 22 and May 8, there have two edits to the article. These two edits are the only edits made during 2010. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) , the total number of article views from April 1 to April 21 was 30. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 8), the total number of page views per day was 58. The day with the most views was April 23, with 14 views. The next day with the most views was May 3, with 8 views. The Italian Wikipedia article saw an increase in the total number of edits and page views as a result of the controversy. It might have been larger but the Italian interest in the team is much smaller to start with than the French or English language communities.

Outside of Wikipedia, there are a few small wikis that focus on the NRL and Rugby League. These wikis generally lack detailed information on the daily total page views but still provide information on the editing history. One such wiki is the NRL Central Wiki that is hosted on Wikia. It has an article about the Melbourne Storm located at http://nrl.wikia.com/wiki/Melbourne_Storm. The article was created on August 13, 2009 and was last updated on October 10, 2009. It has not been updated since the controversy. The wiki the article is hosted has only had three non-bot edits in the past 30 days so the lack of updates is not surprising. A few other wikis have articles that mention the Melbourne Storm. Most of these are institutional wikis where article histories are not available or where content is posted by its creator and never intended to be edited by a wider audience. There does not appear to be a movement by wikis to create additional content in response to or to try to capitalize on interest in response to the controversy.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service. Users can post 140 character messages , called tweets, that are shared with anyone who chooses to follow them. Twitter is one of the most well known and popular social networks in Australia.

There are two main ways to measure Twitter activity. The first is to keep track of the total followers an account has. The second way is to monitor the total number of daily tweets posted about a topic posted across the whole network and by specific accounts.

The Melbourne Storm have an official Twitter account at @MelbStormRLC . There is an unofficial Melbourne Storm Twitter account run by a fansite at @MelbourneStorm_ . As of March 9, 2010, the official account had 458 followers. This contrasts with @MelbourneStorm_ which had 605 followers as of March 8, 2010. By May 10, about nineteen days after the controversy broke, the official account had 1,037 followers and @ MelbourneStorm_ had 720 followers. That was an increase of 579 and 115 followers respectively. The situation has not hurt growth for either account and people are still interested in keeping up with the team and what they are doing.

When compared to the official Twitter accounts for the NRL, Gold Coast Titans, Manly Sea Eagles, North Queensland Cowboys, Parramatta Eels, Canberra Raiders, South Sydney Rabbitohs and New Zealand Warriors, the follower growth for the Melbourne Storm suggests a potential connection to the controversy creating additional interest or a fanbase that has become much more interested in Twitter in a short period of time. (Table 1) The only account with a greater increase in total number of followers is the NRL, which picked up 942 followers. The Melbourne Storm saw a fifty-five percent increase in the new followers. The next closest team of the aforementioned in the same period was the Canberra Raiders who saw a forty-two percent increase. In this context, it reaffirms that additional interest in the team was likely generated by the controversy.

Detailed statistics regarding the total number of references for the Melbourne Storm by day on Twitter are not available. It makes it harder to determine the total daily volume of conversation involving the team in the days surrounding the news leaking about the salary cap violations. People were interested in the Melbourne Storm as the team was briefly trending on Twitter when the story broke. Manual counting can be done but Twitter search only goes back around one week What can be more easily tracked is the posting volume per day of specific accounts related to the Melbourne Storm to compare their activities before and after the controversy broke. In the case of the @MelbourneStorm_, the account does not update regularly with about twenty tweets made during the past year. Their last tweet was on March 24, 2010; they have not posted since the news broke. @MelbStormRLC has posted several tweets since the controversy and has mentioned it. From April 22 to May 9, eighteen days after the story broke, the Storm have made eleven total tweets. Prior to that, the team had made thirteen tweets. The difference in tweet totals is inconsequential. Neither account made changes to their Twitter posting in response in to the controversy.

Searching through Twitter, it is very clear that people are still tweeting about the team and, as of May 10, are tweeting about them at a comparatively higher rate than other teams in the league. One popular way of indicating a tweet is about a certain topic is to include a hashtag in front of a word. This makes the whole phrase easily searchable on Twitter. For example, a person who is tweeting about the Melbourne Storm may include #melbournestorm to indicate the tweet is about the team. There generally fewer of these tweets as a great many accounts on Twitter come directly from RSS feeds. These feeds were not originally created for Twitter and are absent some of the cultural practices and do not use coding tools to help make finding posts easier. Thus, tweets tagged with a # are fewer and more readily countable in search. This allows for comparisons to be made between teams over a short period. For the period between May 3 and May 8, 2010, #melbournestorm beat out all the other teams that were sampled for most the most discussed NRL team. (Table 2) There were twenty-one references for the team on May 5. This is sixteen more than #manlyseaeagles on the same date and the only other team with five or more tweets with a hashtag on a single day. The controversy can likely be seen as the cause for the increase in the number of tweets when compared to other teams in the league.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the largest social networks in Australia and it arguably has the largest population of Melbourne Storm fans online. Outside of interest monitoring, the easiest way to monitor the activities of fans is to examine the fan community’s growth on official pages and groups, and activity levels on these groups.

The Melbourne Storm has an official user profile on Facebook. The profile is for their mascot, Storm Man. It has a limited profile view so only people who have friended the account can view posts and interact with content posted by Storm Man. When the profile was checked on April 6, 2010, the account had 3,203 friends. Checked again on April 28, the account had 4,154. On May 9, the account had 4,401 friends and on May 10, it had 4,494 friends. While the total new friends for their account was fewer than other clubs such as the Brisbane Lions over the same period (Table 3), the team had the largest percentage increase in: 28.7% versus 13.5% for the next closest team, the North Queensland Cowboys. The controversy did not cost the team any friends and resulted in a higher percentage gain when compared to other teams. It has resulted in a net momentum gain that continues almost three weeks after the controversy first broke out.

Facebook Fan Pages are created by teams and by fans. The person who created the Fan Page can post to the wall, control else who can post to the wall, control the type of content posted to the Fan Page and create a unique landing page. Members of a Fan Page can comment on wall posts and indicate they like the post. There are many Melbourne Storm fans that have created Fan Pages and many more have joined, commented and liked posts made to these Fan Pages. A quick search on Facebook for Fan Pages dedicated to the team using the keywords “Melbourne Storm” results in over 500 pages about the team. By looking at a sample of the individual Fan Pages to check the daily posting volume of wall posts and the number of likes and comments to those posts, an idea of how the controversy effected fan interests can be determined.

For this, three Fan Pages were chosen. These were the top three Fan Pages in search that were not created in response to the controversy. They are Melbourne Storm, Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm ! and melbourne storm . The total posts per day by the person who runs the Fan Page, and comments and likes per post associated with the post for the day were recorded for the period between April 1 and May 10, 2010. (Table 4) When comparing the total posts in the period between April 1 and April 22, 2010 to the period between April 23 to May 10, two of the three Fan Pages had more posts made by the maintainers before the controversy. (Graph 1) Two of the three groups saw an increase in the total comments made after the controversy. For Melbourne Storm, a Fan Page with over 40,000 members, the increase was massive going from 54 comments to 803 comments. The increase for Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm !, a group with 281 members as of May 10, was much smaller. It went from 252 to 257 comments. For all three groups, there was an increase in the number of likes after the controversy took place. While posting levels by Fan Page maintainers may not have increased, the level of engagement and interest in the team for the fan population did. The controversy has created a climate where fans are more engaged with posts.

Mailing lists

During much of the 1990s, mailing lists were one of the most popular tools for fans to use in order to communicate with each other. The creation of mailing lists became much easier when sites like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups were created. They largely automated the process of creating mailing lists, provided web based archives and removed barriers of having to understand majordomo syntax in order to join a list.

Australian sports fans actively used these services to participate in their team’s fandom. Some leagues and teams were more popular than other leagues and teams. Amongst the fan communities utilizing mailing lists were Melbourne Storm fans. Most of the lists dedicated to team were on Yahoo!Groups, where there are currently eight lists. These eight lists include melbournestorm2, melbournestormrugbyleague, melbournestormsupportersclub, Storm_Squad, StormSupporters, MSSC-Storm-Mailouts and melbourne_storm_supporters. Many of these lists are no longer active. There are a variety of reasons for this including absent list owners, large volumes of spam content posted on list, people switching to different services in order to express their fondness for the team or fans losing interest in a team. If spam content is not counted in total posting volume by month, the peak posting month was February 2001 with 59 total posts across all eight lists. January 2001 had the next highest posting volume by month with 50 posts. Given the always small and inactive community, it is not surprising that there have been zero posts on these lists since the controversy broke out. These lists have also seen zero growth in membership since their totals were last checked on February 20, 2010. The controversy had no effect on the Storm’s mailing list community.

43things

According to Robot Co-op (2010), 43things “is the world’s largest goal-setting community.” Members of the site set goals for themselves that are published on their profiles and on lists of others who share the same goal. Members are also encouraged to blog about their efforts in trying to complete their goals. Other members are encouraged to cheer people on as they work to complete a goal. When a goal has been completed, people change the goal status to “I did this” and it appears as completed on their profile. This site is relatively popular; according to Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010), the site is ranked the 2,549^th most popular website in Australia.

There are a number of people who have set Australia related sports goals on 43thing. This includes playing for certain clubs to attending the finals to seeing the team they barrack for play. On April 1, 2010, the site was searched for any goals that connected to the Melbourne Storm. Only one goal related to the Melbourne Storm was found. It is “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game.” Two people, erynne and mmcpharlane, had listed this as a goal they were working towards completing. When checked again on May 10, no one had added any additional goals related to the Melbourne Storm. No movement had been made towards completing the existing goal: Both individuals still listed themselves as working towards it and neither had updated their blog to indicate they were any closer to accomplishing this goal. The controversy has not had any measurable impact on people’s goal setting and efforts towards accomplishing their goals as they pertain to the Melbourne Storm.

Conclusion

The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm’s salary cap violations and the subsequent punishment of rewarding them zero points for the season has not resulted in a loss of people interested in the team or resulted in a drop in activity level on the part of fans. Across smaller and less popular services and web sites, there has been no behavior change; the controversy has had a null effect in that no one removed content or interests, nor created content and added interests. For larger sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, there has been a gain in followers, viewers and interactions. Eighteen days out from the initial incident, a long tail increase in views and interactions exists when compared to the period prior to the controversy. While some of the initial burst of activity and interest could be a consequence of negativity publicity, the long tail interest two to three weeks out is much harder to attribute to solely to wanting to watch a controversy for the sake of entertainment. If interest continue to stay elevated, the club should be able to leverage to increase club membership and sponsorship deals, especially as they apply to their online presence, because they have successfully used the controversy to grow their fanbase. The behaviors of fans demonstrate that have been incentized to express their loyalty and solidarity with the team.

References

Albanesius, C. (2010, April 19). Facebook makes ‘connections,’ adds community pages. PC Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362825,00.asp

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, May 10). 43things.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/43things.com

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 49377 times in 201004 . Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 5561 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 91 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 19 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Melbourne storm stripped of two premierships for salary cap breach. (2010, April 22). Fox Sports, Retrieved from http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,27022196-5018866,00.html

Robot Co-op. (2010, May 10). List your goals on 43 things. Retrieved from http://www.43things.com/

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australianfootballleague.wikia.com is yet another tiny Wikia wiki dedicated to the AFL.  This one has three real articles.  Like two of the other AFL wikis on Wikia, it has an article about a team.  The team for this wiki, the Geelong Cats, is one not found on the other wikis looked at.  It has only eight real edits of which five were made by one individual and the rest were bot created.

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aflpedia.wikia.com is another small Wikia wiki dedicated to the AFL.  It is slightly bigger than afl.wikia.com with 6 real articles and 18 edits.  It was founded in May 2009, later than afl.wikia.com.  There are three articles about specific teams: The Collingwood Magpies, the Melbourne Demons and the Hawthorn Hawks.  The article about the Collingwood Magpies is the most edited article on the wiki with eight edits made by two people.  The edit to the Melbourne Demons article contains only one link, to a Melbourne Demon wiki.

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afl.wikia.com is a tiny, two page wiki hosted on Wikia. One page is the main page for the wiki.  The other page is an article dedicated to the Adelaide Crows.  A total of 6 edits have been made to this wiki, with half coming from bots or Wikia staff.  There really isn’t much more that can be said about this wiki other than it exists, it is dedicated to the AFL and has never developed a community.  There is a footy wiki on Wikia.  That wiki is probably where most editors for the AFL on Wikia can be found.

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nrl.wikia.com is a small wiki dedicated to the National Rugby League and the State of Origin.  It is not a very active wiki and doesn’t even have an article about every team in the NRL.  It has a total of 20 articles with about three redirects and has been around since September 2008.  In that period, there have been a total of roughly 112 edits made by 17 contributors.   Of these, five have made more than 10 edits.  They are:

Rey76                     19
JWykes                  18
Emosworld            17
209.66.200.45     15
KapitanYnot         12

Only two articles had more than ten edits.  These articles include Sydney Roosters with 16 edits and Canterbury Bulldogs with 15 edits.  The wiki has gone through several “active” periods that can be seen on the chart below.

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