International Journal of Sport Communication, 2018, 11, 369–388 https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.2018-0079 © 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. ORIGINAL RESEARCH Stealing Thunder Through Social Media: The Framing of Maria Sharapova’s Drug Suspension Travis R. Bell University of South Florida, USA Karen L. Hartman Idaho State University, USA In March 2016 the highest-paid women’s athlete, Maria Sharapova, called a press conference to announce a failed drug test. Sharapova relied on the crisis commu- nication strategy of stealing thunder to present the information to media and break the story. The authors analyze how the press conference and her strategy were portrayed in traditional and online media and how Sharapova promoted and broad- cast the press conference to defend herself. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software and textual analysis, the authors argue that Sharapova’s use of the stealing-thunder strategy successfully influenced media narratives about her suspension and should be considered by athletes in crisis situations. Keywords: crisis communication, media framing, mixed methods, newspapers, sport websites The ability to harness and effectively use social media in sport constantly evolves. While social-media interaction rapidly increases for athletes and sport organizations, what information is shared, and when, continues to be a challenge, especially in the event of a breaking news story. Scholars (Geurin, 2016; Smith & Smith, 2012) suggest that future iterations of athletes social-media use will include more individual and aggressive uses, potentially in response to media stories. Sanderson (2015) predicts that instead of counteracting media, athletes could eventually broadcast their own stories via social media to circumvent traditional media. While this is not yet the norm, there are examples of athletes’ controlling their narrative and connecting directly with fans through digital platforms in times of celebration, retirement, and crisis (Brown, Murphy, & Maxwell, 2018; Kassing & Sanderson, 2015; Schwartz & Vogan, 2017). One such example of an athlete circumventing traditional media is the press conference Maria Sharapova live-streamed on her website, mariasharapova.com, on March 7, 2016. Rather than wait for the news to become public that she failed a performance-enhancing drug test for meldonium, Sharapova’s press conference Bell is with the Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. Hartman is with the Dept. of Communication, Media, and Persuasion, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID. Bell (trbell@usf.edu) is corresponding author. 369