Christopher Bosh, the power forward and possibly the future
center for the Miami Heat, is one of NBA's biggest stars (ESPN). With the
invention of Twitter many athletes, including Bosh, have taken to Twitter to
give people more insight into their lives beyond the news and interviews they appear
on. Having Twitter as their outlet can be very beneficial to them since they
can quickly address any misunderstandings that arise from news reports and
interviews. While perusing Bosh's Twitter, I noticed that there is a strong disconnect
between what he tweets and the type of news stories that are covered about him.
Tweets during the time of his injury. |
Besides his professional basketball life, Bosh tweets little
about his personal life. He has posted a few pictures of his son and mentions
his family in passing, but he doesn't provide more insight into his family life.
In the news, there have been several scathing reports in relation to his
involvement in a child support dispute. Although the woman who is contesting
the child support is providing this unfavorable information, Bosh did not use
Twitter to address her statements (AOL). Instead, he uses Twitter to posts many
pictures of himself on vacation or of him making several appearances on the sets
of television shows or other events. This was peculiar since his family accompanies him
on many of his vacations, and his wife tweets photos of the entire family while
on vacation with him.
Bosh's twitpics versus his wife's. |
As the self-proclaimed coolest dude alive – this is
according to his Twitter – he doesn't communicate regularly with his fans. With
over 800,000 followers his mentions may be too much for him to handle, but that’s
not a good explanation if a celebrity like Lady Gaga can find time to interact
with her followers. Despite the fact that he does not engage actively with his
fans, he does regularly mention LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in his tweets.
This was virtually the only similarity between his tweets and the stories news
organizations posted about him. Many of the news stories treated James, Wade, and
Bosh as a unit. While researching, there were several instances were writers
casually inserted Bosh’s name in non-sport related articles about James and
Wade, simply because he is their teammate.