ABSTRACT
Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson is the forerunner of the professional athlete as celebrity on Twitter. Starting his account while a member of the National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals in 2009, Johnson rose to prominence in social media with his effervescent personality and willingness to tweet directly to fans and the media through his Twitter account. Since retiring from football, Johnson uses Twitter to find competitors in the Fifa 17 digital game. The negotiation of Johnson and his followers’ Fifa 17 playing habits is of special interest to those scholars who are interested in digital gaming culture and social media. While the mechanics of Johnson’s match-making on Twitter is not much different than any “normal” fan announcing on social media that he/she is ready to take on all comers, the addition of his platform and his celebrity status brings a depth of complexity to any approach of his particular context. Using a content analysis of Johnson’s 100,000+ tweets, the author examines how Johnson negotiates social capital in order to perpetuate his game-playing prowess. This investigation furthers our understanding of the ways that professional athletes cultivate an audience with their fans in order to increase their social capital, topics of interest for scholars of digital games, sports media, and social media.
