Date of Award

5-2020

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts, BA

School

CAS

Department

Advertising, Public Relations & Social Media Department

Faculty Advisor

none listed

Abstract

In 2016, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt for the national anthem in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. A less than two-minute action galvanized a brand-new movement in the United States. Two years after losing his NFL contract, Nike endorsed Kaepernick and produced the controversial “Dream Crazy” advertising campaign. The initial advertisement launched on Twitter, shared first by Kaepernick with the #DreamCrazy hashtag. There was a substantial amount of discussion about this campaign through the hashtags #DreamCrazy and the counter-campaign #BoycottNike on Twitter. This paper presents a content analysis that examines the tone and support of the initial campaign and the counter-campaign on the Twitter platform.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Subject Headings

Social media--Political aspects--United States, Political participation, Social justice, Twitter (Firm), Black lives matter movement, Kaepernick, Colin, 1987-, Sports--Social aspects--United States

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