Social media provides athletes with opportunities to enhance their personal brands, engage with fans, and access professional opportunities. Several studies have examined how athletes use social media to attract and engage large audiences. Less is known about the social forces that enable and constrain their popularity. Drawing on expectation states theory, this study considers how athletes’ social status affects their follower counts and engagement rates on Instagram. Based on a content analysis of 6240 images posted on Instagram by 112 professional disc golfers, we show that the gender, sport dominance, and physical attractiveness of athletes affect their popularity, controlling for their strategic efforts to self-brand. These findings offer new insight into the ongoing debate over social media’s impact on long-standing inequalities in the media-sport industry.

中文翻译：

---

受欢迎程度差距：社会地位对生活方式体育明星在 Instagram 上曝光度的影响

社交媒体为运动员提供了提升个人品牌、与粉丝互动和获得职业机会的机会。几项研究探讨了运动员如何使用社交媒体来吸引和吸引大量观众。人们对推动和限制其受欢迎程度的社会力量知之甚少。这项研究借鉴期望状态理论，考虑了运动员的社会地位如何影响他们在 Instagram 上的粉丝数量和参与率。根据对 112 名职业飞盘高尔夫球手在 Instagram 上发布的 6240 张图片进行的内容分析，我们发现运动员的性别、运动优势和身体吸引力会影响他们的受欢迎程度，从而控制他们自我品牌的战略努力。这些发现为有关社交媒体对媒体体育行业长期不平等的影响的持续争论提供了新的见解。