An Examination of the Public’s Twitter Usage of Youth Olympic Games and Olympic Games from 2010 to 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the status of Twitter usage on attracting the public’s attention with regard to the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) as compared to the Olympic Games (OG). Associated tweets were collected and analyzed to determine whether retweets, likes, and hashtags of tweets differed by event (YOG or OG), by event year (2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016), or by timeframe (before, during, and after the major sporting events). Using the Python programming language, this study extracted data (i.e., tweets, retweets, likes, and hashtags) during the three timeframes across the eight mega-sporting events. Findings from this study have implications for the analytical development of social media usage by sport organizations and provide a better understanding of social media platforms in the context of mega-sporting events.