South Carolina basketball: Gamecocks generated massive social media engagement during title run
South Carolina basketball fans will flood Main Street in Columbia Wednesday night.
The Gamecocks faithful, there to see the women’s national championship parade, will get to celebrate the title once again.
It was a dominating showing for the Gamecocks en route to a title and a dominating showing for them on social media as well over the span of the final four.
The Social Media Insights Lab, part of South Carolina’s College of Information and Communications, did a study to examine the conversation around the women’s basketball program from April 1 to April 6.
It was all good for the Gamecocks.
The women’s national championship game drew almost 5 million viewers to watch two perennial powers of the last decade.
The game generated over 81,000 individual posts between April 1 and 6 about the game, largely on Twitter. It was what the lab called a “significant” increase compared to the title run five years ago.
In 2017 there were roughly 23,000 posts about the Gamecocks beating Mississippi State compared to over three times the amount this year.
This not only goes to show the growth in women’s basketball overall but the national prominence of a program like South Carolina right now.
South Carolina was the talk of the basketball world. The Gamecocks earned mentions from famous alumni like Darius Rucker and other people like Magic Johnson and former president Barack Obama.
Others like JJ Watt, Carmelo Anthony also mentioned South Carolina, generating different mentions over the course of the Gamecocks’ win.
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The biggest thing the lab generated was an also overwhelming proportion of tweets reflected positively on South Carolina.
A whopping 65 percent of social media engagements were positive with fewer than 40 total negative mentions. The other 35 percent of the engagement studied reflecting South Carolina in a neutral light.
Head coach Dawn Staley was the most-mentioned Gamecock. Users mentioned her over 17,000 times, referring to her as a “legend” and an “icon” on multiple occasions.
Staley’s been making the rounds of late. Charlotte FC honored her at the latest home game. Staley again popped up again this week to support Destanni Henderson at the WNBA draft.
Speaking of Henderson, she was also mentioned 3,500 times after a fantastic 26-point performance in the championship game.
The hashtag #HennythingsPossible was picked up by women’s basketball legends like Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart along with Megan Rapinoe and DK Metcalf.
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