Twitter Analysis of #Andrew Luck
One of the most shocking moments in the early beginnings of this NFL season - and, truthfully in all sports this year and beyond - was the sudden retirement of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck. Pegged by many as a likely choice to win MVP, at the helm of a dark-horse Super Bowl contender, Luck chose to walk away mere weeks before the start of the regular season. As for reasoning, Luck cited a growing joylessness in playing, a mounting list of injuries, and the mental stress and fatigue that accompanies recovery and training. Of course, in 2019 no major news can break without significant controversy and cultural debate accompanying it. While many supported Andrew Luck in his decision, there were others who questioned the toughness of not only Luck, but the millennial generation as a whole (I have included a tweet from noted airhead Doug Gottlieb below this paragraph for reference). Due to its contentious nature, I decided to explore the debate about Andrew Luck’s retirement through the lense of the #AndrewLuck.
Retiring cause rehabbing is “too hard” is the most millennial thing ever #AndrewLuck
— Doug Gottlieb (@GottliebShow) August 25, 2019
To begin my research I utilized the TAGS v6.1.9.1 software. This allowed me to accrue thousands of tweets concerning the subject at hand. Out of all the tweets I collected, I sampled approximately 100 tweets that I used to form my conclusions. I chose to sample these tweets randomly, without any prior insight, in order to remove any bias or slant from the selections. I then filtered out redundant or irrelevant tweets after the fact in order to clean the population, hence the approximation of 100.
Once my sample was selected, I coded each tweet using 5 factors: the “mood” of the tweet (positive/negative/neutral), whether it was concerning the on- or off- field exploits of Luck, rhetorical strategies used in the tweet, the author’s purpose for sending said tweet, and which additional media was included in the tweet, if any. After coding each tweet for these five categories, I was able to aggregate the information and draw some conclusions.
The first aspect of these tweets that I chose to analyze was the general mood and attitudes of the tweets I collected. I wanted to determine whether the general twitter public would reflect some of the negative responses to Luck’s retirement, or if that was mostly hot air being blown by pundits to attract views.
What I found supported the latter argument. As you can see in the pie chart, the vast majority of responses were either positive or neutral. In fact, only 15.2% of tweets could be definitively classified as negative. One common complaint among negative tweeters revolved around their fantasy teams. While it seems fairly selfish, fantasy football is a huge concern for a lot of people, especially when a singular talent, such as Andrew Luck, is concerned. In fact, some former NFL players took to Twitter to voice their frustration with the negative impact his retirement would have on their fantasy rosters. One such former player: OJ Simpson.
Andrew Luck you couldn’t have shared that news before I drafted you an hour ago? #andrewluck @Colts pic.twitter.com/szGO2Dik2i
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) August 25, 2019
As could be seen in the above pie chart, many of the responses to Andrew Luck were of neutral temperament. This may seem odd for such a hotly debated topic. To provide context and explanation for this, I will present a couple more charts.
As you can see, many of the tweets were created for the purpose of advertising. Specifically, a large portion of these tweets were advertising podcasts, demonstrated by the number of tweets that included podcast links. While this did not directly contribute to the discourse, it shows a larger trend in online discussion. Mainly, debate in the modern age can transcend media, with audible debates on a podcast and written responses on Twitter. I was somewhat surprised at how much of the Twitter discourse did not truly take place on Twitter, but rather on podcasts and radio shows. It seems that humans will often choose auditory reception over reading, even when the literature is in such manageable chunks as tweets.
The debate over Andrew Luck was not quite as contentious as I expected. Immediately following his retirement, I heard numerous pundits borderline slandering Luck’s name. However, perhaps the operative word in that sentence is heard. Those who create video and audio content are obligated to drive listeners to their product in order to justify their business. This can lead to hyperbolic and passionate opinions being presented for consumption. Meanwhile, those who use Twitter to simply express their opinions have no such mandate. Thus, they are able to be a lot more reasonable and positive. As such, the debate regarding Andrew Luck was not too much of a debate at all, at least with regard to aspects written in Twitter ink.