Twitter Study Reveals Cities Most And Least Receptive To Michael Sam
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin says Michael Sam, or any openly gay player, will not have a problem inside an NFL locker room. Barwin wrote that it's the media that would be the biggest issue for Sam.
The fans of whatever team selects Sam will weigh in with opinions as well.
A study from Emory University revealed the fans in NFL cities that were most receptive, and the fans in cities that were least receptive to Sam's announcement that he is gay.
"We were interested in looking at how the fans in NFL cities feel about Michael Sam," the study, done by Emory Sports Analytics, says. "In order to do this, we collected all tweets mentioning "Michael Sam" in the 31 NFL markets for the past 2 days (2/9 morning – 2/11 morning). The tweets were sorted by market, and analyzed for positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. Looking at the ratio of positive, negative, and neutral tweets allowed us to compare Twitter sentiment for Michael Sam across NFL Markets."
New York had the most positive reaction to Michael Sam, followed by St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Kansas City, Washington, Philadelphia, Tampa and Seattle.
Nashville had the most negative reaction to Sam, followed by Oakland, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Jacksonville and Cleveland.
The entire study can be seen at this location.