Double Consciousness and the Presentation of Black Basketball Players on Instagram

Abstract

Social media is used for a variety of reasons, and for athletes it has been used as a tool to market themselves as brands, especially on Instagram. For high-level black basketball players there is an expectation to present the side of themselves that will help this brand building process with the intentions of reaching higher levels of competition. Two individuals who have reached the highest level of competition, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, were told by Fox News Reporter Laura Ingraham to “shut up and dribble” when they spoke up on their political views. The purpose of this research paper is, through ethnography and qualitative analysis, to understand the decisions that go into the way that this group of individuals presents themselves on Instagram. These individuals all agree on the notion that they are more than just basketball players, so this study looked to analyze the photo content to support this claim. The study finds that the level of competition that an individual has achieved plays an important role in the amount of information that they are willing to present about themselves on Instagram.