The News in New Media

Month: April 2023

NHL, NBA Postseasons Begin

April 15, 2023

Featured image courtesy of Bleacher Report. 

The NHL and NBA are both set to embark on their postseasons as teams compete for their respective trophies in one of the most exciting times of the year for sports fans. The NHL regular season just wrapped up last night and the NBA’s play-in bracket also concluded as their playoffs have officially begun today. 

Both final playoff brackets include 16 teams, though the way those teams were selected differ. The NHL’s are simply the top 8 teams in each conference points-wise, while the NBA hosts a play-in tournament for teams seeded 7-10. Those mid-tier teams must go through each other first to make it into the final two spots in each conference’s bracket. 

Let’s take a look at each of these major leagues’ playoff pictures.

The NHL

The NHL’s postseason officially begins on Monday, but the playoff picture was only set in stone as of last night as the regular-season games concluded. 

There were quite a few surprises leading into the postseason for the League and its fans. First and foremost, the Pittsburgh Penguins missed out on the playoffs for the first time in sixteen seasons, the longest playoff streak in all pro sports. Almost immediately, the team announced major changes in their front office, firing their general manager, assistant general manager, and president of hockey operations the next morning. Several other teams who missed the playoffs also made changes, as the Washington Capitals and Columbus Blue Jackets both fired their coaches and the Anaheim Ducks announced they would not extend their own coach’s contract.

In the last week, the Penguins were mentioned 21.55K times, though as with all sports teams this doesn’t represent the whole picture as certainly many people refer to them just by their nickname (i.e., “Penguins”) or their nickname’s nickname (i.e., “Pens”). 61.7% of this conversation was negative in its sentiment, as the top themes of discussion talked about the Penguins’ first miss in so long, failed hockey ops leadership, and if the core three players’ careers were being squandered. Interestingly, Reddit was the top platform in terms of discussion volume and most influential users, which is not something we see often. 

Another plotline is the record-breaking Boston Bruins. This juggernaut squad took the NHL by storm this year, winning the most games in a season ever, with 65, and most points ever, with 135. They clinched both their playoff spot and the President’s Trophy (for the team with the most points) incredibly early and it seems unlikely that anyone will be able to beat them. However, it is the playoffs, and anything can happen. 

Like with the Penguins, Reddit was again the top-volume source of digital conversation, revealing a vibrant hockey community on this platform we don’t see much of in the mainstream news coverage. 

Round 1 of the NHL playoffs begin on Monday evening. 

The NBA

The NBA’s postseason has already begun, with its first games taking place this afternoon! Now that we’re past the play-in tournament, the competitive landscape can be revealed. 

The play-in works by the 7th and 8th seeded teams playing each other while the 9th and 10th seeded teams play each other. The winner of the higher-seeded game automatically moves on to the 7th seed position, while the loser of the higher-seeded game plays the winner of the lower-seeded game; the winner of this match then takes the 8th seed. The Western play-in winners were the L.A. Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves while the Eastern play-in winners were the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat. 

Over the last week, the NBA Play-In has been mentioned a stunning 299.2K times, with a surge starting on April 11-12, when the games began. Interestingly, mentions of this bracket format were 63.3% negative, and as it only began during the pandemic it seems that fans’ responses are mixed about this expanded format. Meanwhile in the NHL, journalists and commentators like Greg Wyshynski are pushing for a similar play-in format, again to mixed feedback from fans. 

Meanwhile, the NBA has seen its own share of controversy in the end of its season, as the Dallas Mavericks have faced backlash from its own players as well as fans and the league itself for allegedly sabotaging their own postseason chances. Star player Luka Doncic candidly shared that he was unhappy with his team’s management and performance, while the NBA later fined the organization for resting key players when they should have still been competing hard. 

More controversy came from early on in the playoff round, as the Timberwolves’ Rudy Gobert appeared to hit his teammate during a mid-game huddle. While this action is certainly concerning to management and fans, some fans online saw the humor in the moment, recalling the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when Gobert notably did not believe in the virus and ran around touching other people and their belongings. Sentiment around Gobert’s name is overwhelmingly poor, with 87.7% negatively coded mentions. 

The NBA playoff games are ongoing! We look forward to seeing which teams win each league this season and what other storylines develop. 

Author: Kayleigh Jackson

A Week After the Indictment

April 10, 2023

Image courtesy of ABC News

In the week following the formal indictment of Donald Trump, nearly 450 thousand Tweets have been sent mentioning the former President’s predicament. The indictment, unsealed on Tuesday April 4th, includes 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to alleged hush money payments made in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels. 

Mentions reached a sharp peak on April 4th as the details of the charges came to light, with 186 thousand mentions of Trump and ‘indictment’ in a single day. The message with the most retweets that day was the Manhattan District Attorney’s own tweet: 

Conservative voices were the loudest on Twitter that day, with the most popular Tweets coming from politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Ted Cruz. These and other Republican voices came to Trumps’ defense, calling the indictment at best anti-democratic or, at worst, fake. 

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1643341848029659139

The severity of the charges against Trump and the likelihood of his conviction seem to depend on which source one consults. Unsurprisingly, perspectives seem to divide along partisan lines. 

Trump himself is of course left out of the conversation on Twitter since his ban, but has been very active on TruthSocial, his own social networking site. Trump has posted 14 times in the past 24 hours and since the indictment has averaged over a dozen posts per day. Some of Trump’s posts seem cryptic and frightening, but most simply accuse, in myriad ways, the state of New York of conspiring against him. Trump maintains a loyal following on TruthSocial, with nearly every one of his posts receiving more than 20 thousand likes.

Donald Trump Jr. has also been active on TruthSocial since the indictment, but caused a stir when he shared a news article featuring a picture of the judge in Trump Sr.’s case, Juan Merchan, with his daughter, Loren, and claimed that she worked on the Biden-Harris presidential campaign. Trump Jr. has since deleted the post after it caused too much outrage.

While the breaking news of the indictment struck, the conversation on Twitter reached a fever pitch. However, now that the news is out, the conversation seems to have died down. While the day of the arraignment saw over 186 thousand tweets about Trump’s indictment, today there have been only about 6 thousand. 

This graph demonstrates the peak of the conversation on April 4th and its decline over the past week

Currently, prosecutors are seeking to prohibit Mr. Trump from posting evidence on social media or otherwise providing it to the media. Some speculate that Judge Merchan may have to consider a gag order for Trump in order to keep the case progressing normally, but until then we look forward to keeping an eye on the conversation.

By Molly Riddell

March Madness 2023 Wraps Up With Two New Champs

April 5, 2023

The annual NCAA National Championship tournament just wrapped up this week with two new winners cutting down the nets. The UConn Huskies beat San Diego State by a score of 76-59 to win the men’s tournament while LSU beat the Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 on the women’s side. Meanwhile, UConn’s Adama Sanogo and LSU’s Angel Reese earned the Most Outstanding Player (MOP) titles. 

Naturally, with more than a month of hype and games, there was a massive amount of discussion around both the men and women’s tournaments. While the competition is officially known as the National Championship, the colloquial term “March Madness” is more popular in common parlance and online. From March 1 through today, the phrase “March Madness” or the hashtag #MarchMadness have garnered more than 2.32 million mentions, while the more official hashtag #NationalChampionship only earned 127.2K mentions. 

On both fronts, a majority of the sentiment was considered positive, in part due to so many people discussing great plays and some of the amazing talent on show this year, like both MOPs mentioned above as well as Iowa’s star Caitlin Clark. 

However, like in most competitions, there was some debate and dissensus throughout, particularly depending on whose favorite teams were ahead at the time. For example, Iowa’s Clark taunted an opponent with a “you can’t see me” gesture earlier in the tournament, while LSU’s Reese then turned the gesture back on her during the final game, adding to it with a “talk to the ring” gesture. Online pundits immediately jumped on Reese by calling her “classless,” which in turn prompted others to respond by arguing they only have a problem with Reese making the gesture because she’s Black, while Clark is white. 

https://twitter.com/OrtizKicks/status/1642648288280162305?s=20

Adding fuel to the fire was First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, who suggested inviting both teams rather than just the victors to visit the White House. In both professional and collegiate sports, the team who wins the national championship has traditionally visited the White House and met the president following their win. Dr. Biden’s suggestion was immediately shot down by LSU and echoes some of the concerns of racism by others, given that Iowa’s stars are predominantly white while LSU’s are Black.

https://twitter.com/Reese10Angel/status/1643024890813874179?s=20

Despite these concerns and competing opinions, the tournament did demonstrate a great step forward for women’s sports and demonstrated the market is there for women’s team brands to compete with men’s teams. ESPN’s public relations team shared some of the record-breaking statistics: 

In fact, there were not only broadcast records shattered but also many athletic records, including records broken by both Reese and Clark.

A positive and charming storyline to come out of the tournament was that a pair of cousins won their respective championships. Reese and her cousin Jordan Hawkins, who plays for UConn, each took home a trophy. Sounds like they’re already planning quite the celebration back home!

Congratulations to the UConn Huskies and LSU Tigers on their championship wins!

Author: Kayleigh Jackson