Social Media and the Sandusky Scandal

The recent scandal revolving around Penn State’s former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been blasted all over the media. It’s been on a circulating story on SportsCenter for the past week or so, and on Wednesday night when the news broke that head coach Joe Paterno was fired over the incidents, it was literally the only story on SportsCenter that night. As we all well know, listening to others’ opinions can skew people’s views on certain issues. Twitter is a huge media platform that emphasizes this problem. For instance, “Penn State” made the top 10 for Twitter trends and when you search anything regarding the university on the social media site, all that pops up is the developing news with the scandal. Same thing with Google, all you have to type is Penn State Scandal into the search box and you get over 17,000 results.

Issues that have arisen in regards to power, media, and deviance can be easily illustrated by the amount of attention the scandal has received thus far. The media has influenced the sports world to a point where it put pressure on the university to take immediate action, and I think this is one of the main reasons Paterno was fired. Had new media not been so involved I think the school would have been allowed more time to investigate the case and explore all options for the head coach, who had already announced his retirement at the season’s end. But because of social outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, the university was not only getting pressure from news agencies, they were also being forced to make something happen from society.

Social media has the power to either make you or break you in almost all walks of life, but especially in the sports world. It brings attention to your specific entity and can have good affects as well as bad affects. An example of a good affect could be marketing your brand. Millions of people use social media outlets everyday and is highly visible, and thus getting your brand on board with this can reap great benefits. As for bad affects, it allows people to put out their opinions, both good and bad, which as I mentioned earlier can influence others’ reactions to situations as well.

Bethany Nollette

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