The Preservation of Published Social Media Content in Sporting Organisations

Abstract

This research project aimed to develop our understanding of what actions sporting organisations (SOs) are taking to preserve their published social media content, in order to establish what steps might be required to promote good preservation practices within the industry. A survey was distributed amongst the national and international-level sporting organisations that represent IOC approved sports in native English-speaking countries to gather information on their Social Media (SM) posting habits, any preservation practices, policies, and standards (P-PPS) — general (G-P-PPS) and SM-specific (SM-P-PPS) —they might have in place and their perceptions regarding the importance of both practices. Results showed that SM is a well used and important tool within the sporting industry (SI). However, few organisations have SMP-PPS currently despite the prominent belief that preservation is important for the documentation of sporting history. Further, few SOs have formally assigned preservation-specific responsibilities to current employees due to limitations such as financial constraints, low-staff capacity and lack of appropriate training. Therefore, provision of industry-wide preservation training and the creation of umbrella preservation standards or policy templates would be useful to assist SOs of all organisation-levels with developing and implementing their own P-PPS