mediations

How Twitter reconnects footballers with fans

Although they don't do it very well, football clubs still seem particularly keen to try and keep clinging on to vanished notions of 'command and control" PR. Only this week The Guardian was banned from covering Leeds United match because one of its reporters asked a question the chairman didn't like.    

Today, the Guardian launches The Secret Footballer blog, apparnetly written by a Premiership player. Here's what he says about social media:

"....it's the players, through Twitter and such like, who have brought back the sense of connection between footballers and fans that for so long was held up by journalists as an example of the "you and them" scenario that developed when money began to flood into the game and, in turn, players' wages increased out of all proportion with the man in the street.

"This connection, albeit through the internet, is hugely important and because of it we must not allow social networking to become a dirty phrase. For this generation, Twitter and Facebook offer a wonderful opportunity to follow almost any player you like and interact with them."







Six degrees of Connection

I have been looking at transnational social networks for a conference presentation and started wondering how useful the notion of Six Degrees of Separation is in understanding the reach of social media.

The idea of being six handshakes away from anyone else is exciting (even if I can think of quite a few surprisingly short links to Adolf Hitler). I do it through 'portal people' like Tony Blair or Buzz Aldrin - men I have met but don't chat toon a regular basis.

Any meaningful connection in for communicators looking to social media needs to have topical element - will he or she pass it on in a timely manner? That severely restricts my transnational closeness.

Also, to try and converse with someone I have no direct connection becomes tricky. I almost inevitably find myself using media portals - to leap some gaps would have use a big website or news organisation.

I can trace a social path to most people, but it would take a range of platforms and channels to do so. And it would be almost impossible to pass on a message that retained the form I intended.