Kim Mulkey, The Washington Post,and a Stealing Thunder Pseudo-Event During the 2024 NCAA Tournament

Stealing Thunder as Strategic Communication

Stealing thunder is a strategic approach to self-disclosure when an individual or organization proactively and tactically releases negative information before media-led investigations regarding the same information (Arpan & Pompper, 2003; Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005). Stealing thunder was first understood as a persuasion tactic in legal trials to get ahead of potentially harmful evidence or witness testimony. Williams et al. (1993) identified five effective attributes to stealing thunder: message framing to downplay the significance, perceived credibility by proactively revealing negative information, counterarguing damaging testimony, diminishing the value of “old” information, and altering the meaning of a message. Stealing thunder is risky since it offers unprompted (potentially) damaging evidence and increases the salience of negative information (Williams et al., 1993).

In the context of media and public relations, stealing thunder is strategically deployed to disclose unfavorable information in an effort to maintain positive relationships with key stakeholders and constituents. Practitioners will employ stealing thunder to protect credibility while affording an individual or organization the ability to shape the mediated messaging around a potential crisis (Bell & Hartman, 2018). Stealing thunder posits that stakeholders are more likely to view the organization as credible because of the appearance of honest communication through disclosure. This approach to public relations is effective because it allows the retention of power and ownership in how information is initially presented and delivered (Ondrus, 1998).

As a form of preemptive crisis communication, stealing thunder relies on timing as a critical factor in how messaging is crafted and received (Arpan & Pompper, 2003). Weighing the element of timing presents a risk by commenting instead of remaining silent (Coombs, 2014) versus an opportunity to gain influence with key stakeholders during a crisis (Williams et al., 1993). In studies specific to sports public relations, stealing thunder demonstrated an effective tactic in shaping and altering media discourse through the case of Maria Sharapova’s speaking about a negative drug test and ultimate drug suspension (Bell & Hartman, 2018). However, little is known about social media reaction when the offensiveness of the action is unknown.

Mediated Pseudo-Events

The scope of college-level athletic department public relations efforts has changed with the evolution of communication industries and technological advancements (Ruihley et al., 2016). Specifically, press conferences and interviews have been utilized and distributed as conventional and strategic discursive processes when needing to “resolve a crisis of confidence” (Smudde & Courtright, 2013, p. 361) for sports individuals and organizations. Research suggests social media functions as a space for users to develop narratives in crisis communication responses and image repair strategies (Roussin et al., 2022), which illustrates an importance for social listening to monitor and respond to potential crises (Coombs & Harker, 2021).

A media event is a performative, pre-planned intervention in a news cycle (Dayan & Katz, 1992; van Loon, 2010). Media events were theorized through the advent of broadcasting around the aspect of liveness to consider them as “interruptions of routine” (Dayan & Katz, 1992, p. 5) that could suspend and preempt a controlled media system that thrived on routinized production and distribution processes. An important aspect of a media event creates a paradox whereby the event is generally organized beyond media but distributed through media, which raises its stature and amplifies its value (Dayan & Katz, 1992; Yterberg, 2017). Previous scholarship has advocated for more research on the intersection of sports-specific public relations and media events (L’Etang, 2006).

A critique of the original conceptualization of media events coincides with the rise of public relations to construct “pseudo-events” as manufactured and controlled media moments (Boorstin, 1992; Peake & Parks, 2008). A pseudo-event includes the goals of a media event but has been challenged as “premeditated and generated” (Ytreberg, 2017, p. 316), yet acknowledged for producing real effects through slanted media coverage (Peake & Parks, 2008). Thus, pseudo-events can impact the news process from one of gathering and originating stories to a publicized role that influences newsmaking (Boorstin, 1992; Parks, 2021).

Coaches and athletes participate in press conferences with news media, often regulated by league or tournament policies, including “required” interview sessions during the NCAA basketball tournament (NCAA, 2024), as was the case with Mulkey’s press conference. The ubiquity of these events generates a perspective of a theatrical performance, whereby media attend to watch a stage performance (Denison & Markula, 2005). Media often come to expect some level of emotion, whether in a pre- or post-game context amplified by preliminary hype or the high and lows associated with an outcome (Pehkonen, 2021).

Thus, the press conference is a consistent exemplar of a pseudo-event (Boorstin, 1992; Peake & Parks, 2008). Press conferences typify media events as they focus on “a specific thematic core” to engage the media engine that distributes this controlled performance to reach “a wide and diverse multiplicity of audiences and participants” (Hepp & Couldry, 2010, p. 12). A press conference is characterized by mediation, creation by a non-media entity, drama, and planning (van Loon, 2010). Mediation is a key element of a press conference as it is viewed and experienced through staging media production (Katz et al., 1981; van Loon, 2010).

Stealing thunder is often, but not always, accompanied by a media event. When a press conference is used to engage in image repair, it has been considered for its “display of rhetorical expertise” that becomes preserved as “part of the public record” (Smudde & Courtright, 2013, p. 365). Mulkey’s scripted press conference became a pseudo-event, a “partially-controlled event” (Peake & Parks, 2008, p. 87) that attempted to frame Mulkey’s position through an opening statement in opposition to The Post. Of most interest is the way this press conference was constructed for a traditional media audience, though one that now helps circulate the message through “a pseudo-event” social media transmission process for audience interpretation.

Social Media as Re-Presentational Discourse

Few scholars (Dayan & Katz, 1992; McLuhan, 1964) were remarkably ahead of their time in understanding how media events through new media would produce social consequences. McLuhan (1964) outlined that “it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association” (p. 20). Dayan and Katz (1992) suggested “a new medium may transform not only a ‘message,’ not only the nature of response, but an entire structure of social relations” (p. 217). Social media provides the newest medium that produces that transformative influence on communicating messages, but also one that is highly fragmented and shifting social power (Yterberg, 2017).

Social media sites illustrate a constitutive space where representations of knowing and believing are reflected largely through the everyday citizen (Thumin, 2017). As Couldry (2020) explains, “Media presents us with a world for our reactions, involvement, and disgust, but this is always a re-presentation” (p. 34). It is in that re-presentation where social media sites vary by their literal shape through visual and written presentation style but also in the scale of interactive and interpersonal communication processes (Carr & Hayes, 2015; McLuhan, 1964). The re-presentational style afforded to social media users is distributed across “persistent channels of masspersonal communication” (Carr & Hayes, 2015, p. 49) and engaged through a nonlinear and fragmented communicative process that can highlight active stakeholders who are disassociated from organizations hoping to shape stories (Brown et al., 2015).

X represents a social media site relevant to this study for three reasons. First, it provided the space for a “journalistic intervention” (Parks, 2021, p. 133) to promote the pseudo-event of Mulkey’s press conference, whereby it was used as a site for journalists to tease the Mulkey story before her press conference and distribute video following the press conference. Second, since Mulkey’s press conference was largely uninformative with details, X allowed for emergent user-generated discourse at a “political-press-public axes” (Eldridge et al., 2019, p. 272) centered on Mulkey and The Post as the leading social actors in the pseudo-event. Lastly, X provided an avenue for “tracking discourse” to identify the representative perceptions of social media users to consider the re-presentational fragmentation of ideas as partial, yet shifting discourses across a mediated narrative (Altheide & Schneider, 2013; Yterberg, 2017) bookended by the press conference and the eventual published article.

The goal of this project is to examine the context of the press conference as a mediated pseudo-event, understand emerging discourses in reaction to Mulkey’s attempt at stealing thunder, and investigate how these discourses reflect or alter Mulkey’s strategies. The research conducted in this project was guided by three research questions.

RQ1: How does Mulkey enact practices of stealing thunder in her press conference?

Data Collection

Data was collected in two parts through X using Brandwatch, a social media listening analytic tool used to collect user-generated content. First, the video of Mulkey’s press conference was gathered from WBRZ sports anchor Michael Cauble, who posted the press conference in two parts. Those videos were then edited together using Adobe Premiere to generate a transcript that was then cleaned for accuracy and used for data analysis.

The data set was collected from X starting March 22, 2024 (the night the tweet hinted at a news story involving Mulkey) and ending April 4, 2024 (three days after LSU’s season ended). This time frame considered any lingering effects following The Post story. The conversation slowed to only a few tweets across the final three days.

The following search parameter was used in Brandwatch: [(“Kim Mulkey” OR Mulkey) NEAR/15 (“Washington Post” OR washingtonpost OR WaPo)]. These terms allowed a narrow scope to connect Mulkey and The Post within 15 words of each other. Since Mulkey initiated the pseudo-event, no centralized hashtag publicly connected the story across X. So, this research considers Mulkey’s role in constructing herself and The Post as two interconnected poles and the prominent social actors embedded in the event.

The data set included 25,587 tweets and retweets. To consider the emergent discourse on X, only original tweets were considered in the analysis. Removing retweets reduced the data set to 4928 tweets. The final data set included only tweets that provided some original content. Thus, tweets were removed if a hyperlink to a story was the only item shared or tweeting at individuals with a link but no original material. After cleaning, the final data set for analysis included 4209 tweets.

Data Analysis

Qualitative discourse analysis is an appropriate methodological choice for understanding the contours of emerging online discussions and reactions (Bunch et al., 2024; Chang et al., 2023). While experiencing changes in ownership, X remains an important space for social discussion about sports (Howard et al., 2023). The analysis leans on Gee's (2014) work that inquires about the use of language through seven building tasks of language, which functions in a discourse analysis to make meaning and construct reality. The researchers closely examined the dataset to unearth context about language-in-use and identify discursive collectives (Gee, 2014). By analyzing the social media data through Gee’s understanding of language, the researchers were able to understand how users reacted to the stealing thunder attempt.

An inductive approach was used to sort, thematically organize and analyze the tweets. This coding process centered on discursive practices emerging on topics related to Mulkey and The Post, a relationship co-created on social media by Forde and the LSU press conference. Thus, it was understood that they presented two preliminary coding categories to consider.

Both researchers independently read through approximately 10% of the tweets to explore a broad spectrum of topics being discussed. They gathered notes and organically considered relevant topics to begin clustering ideas and patterns. The researchers then compared notes to develop a preliminary coding scheme. Categories were situated chronologically to evaluate how they developed over time. These included: social media users directing questions toward LSU-specific and sport media personalities; media personalities sharing some portion or all of Mulkey’s press conference; interpretations of Mulkey’s press conference; showing support for Mulkey; questions of Mulkey feeling threatened; suspicion of Mulkey; recognition of her attempt to redirect the conversation (i.e., stealing thunder); vulgar hatred toward Mulkey; situating Mulkey against or in opposition to The Post; targeting The Post as attacking Mulkey; supporting The Post specifically and journalism broadly; curiosity toward the unknown in the potential story; “what if” scenarios; and redirections or deflections toward unrelated stories. The authors then split the remaining tweets to complete the coding process until saturation was reached.

An Excel file was used to organize the tweets within these broad categories. Once the tweets were situated into a respective category, the researchers read through each category to identify overlapping patterns and themes within the language used in the social media discourse. Three discourses emerged from the data: curious hype, polarizing Mulkey, and journalistic merit.

Previous research warns social media discourses, especially on X, cannot be conflated as a stand-in for public opinion (Billings, 2014). Thus this project organizes prevalent discourses expressed through social media posts to give meaning to the pseudo-event. Researchers re-reviewed each discourse, identified and organized the tweets further as a way of “going beyond” the data, and direct quotes are provided throughout the analysis as examples of thematic synthesis (Novak, 2024; Thomas & Harden, 2008). Before presenting these emergent themes in the social media discourse, background and analysis to Mulkey’s press conference is needed to understand the discursive stealing thunder strategy she used to contextualize and recognize how the digital conversation unfolded.

Discourse One: Curious Hype

As evident through the viral nature of social media, increased attention was given to Mulkey in response to the unusual press conference. Rather than persuading the public to interpret The Post’s allegations through the frame that Mulkey presents, social media discourse instantly focused on hype (i.e., “I can’t wait to read it”) around the budding controversy. The characteristic of this discourse was a lack of stance around the comments Mulkey made but rather the need and desire to know more. Clearly, Mulkey’s remarks acted to announce and lend credence to Babb’s forthcoming story, without any acknowledgment from The Post as to its existence. Further, this discourse demonstrated little interest in a court case promised by Mulkey for the “best defamation lawyer.” The discourse of hype is important since the added curiosity suggested users were searching for more information about Mulkey, with no context as to why. Thus, Mulkey invited users to speculate or cite her previous transgressions from their collective memory which did not follow her stealing thunder strategy.

Users crafted opinions based on the mere existence of the opening statement. One post offered, “The ferocity at which Mulkey is attacking this WaPo article *before it's even published* suggests to me that it is going to make her look really, really bad.” Such comments demonstrate that Mulkey was not just evaluated on the content of her speech but also her delivery. This reaction outlined the influence of Mulkey’s communication during the press conference as a signpost for her crisis communication strategy. Had she presented a monotone written statement or posted on LSU’s social media account, the intensity of her press conference would not be evaluated. Instead, “Think how many people never would have known about or read the Washington Post article who are now anxiously waiting to read it because of this press conference. Kim Mulkey - master promoter.” The context of rich media through video influenced social media discourse and opinion formation. Users were left to question what was causing her intensity, which in turn created more engagement with the unknown criticism. Some users interpreted her intensity as a reaction to the severity of the criticism instead of the gravity of her expressed threats. Most responses did not even evaluate the earnestness of the threats but rather discussed what the threats signaled about the criticism from The Post.

A lack of specifics offered in Mulkey’s opening comments fueled interest: “I can’t wait to read the Washington Post’s article on Kim Mulkey/LSU. I’m more intrigued after watching her press conference. She tried to get ahead of something without talking about the substance of it.” The reaction here is that Mulkey lacks any details in her response which leads users to believe she has no idea about the specifics of the attacks. This frames her response as uninformed and unprepared. Coupled with audience anticipation, a notable shift moves the expertise from the coach to the journalist. If Mulkey fails to be specific, she risks losing her credibility and appears to be powerless while making attacks. In traditional crisis communication, it is best practice to avoid communication that would encourage or amplify rumors and miscommunication.

Interestingly, X users indicated that Mulkey’s actions reflected the “Streisand Effect” either through implicit cues or even explicit mentions. One user posted, “did Kim Mulkey streisand effect the wapo story lol.” The Streisand Effect is an internet-based terminology that refers to the court case of singer and actress Barbra Streisand, who amplified public interest in photos of her California home by requesting they be removed from the internet entirely (Jansen & Martin, 2015). Much like the proliferation of images of Streisand’s home through the court case, Mulkey’s comments ignited the social media discourse of hype. Users explicitly mentioning similarities between Streisand and Mulkey is important because it demonstrates an awareness of the dynamic of increased unwanted amplification.

Users offered insights about the amplification of hype from the perspective of The Post (i.e., they “could not buy this type of press”) and how the newspaper would benefit from Mulkey’s amplification of a reported story to drive discussion of the article. This discourse suggests that even users themselves recognized the impact of this unusual approach. One user sarcastically noted, “Talking about a story that isn’t even out will surely make it go away and ensure no one cares about it.”

Additional amplification was expressed by sharing and tagging other accounts such as journalists, sports commentators, and public opinion leaders. Common tags included Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, Outkick columnist and media personality Clay Travis, and Michael Cauble, the local sports anchor who initially posted the Mulkey press conference, which garnered nearly 30 million views. This is particularly meaningful as it heightened visibility beyond the LSU women’s basketball team. Thus, the function of tagging prominent opinion leaders added to the hype and amplification of the reactions. Importantly, tagging did little to garner support for Mulkey, which was ultimately the intention of the stealing thunder attempt. The significance in the “curious hype” discourse centers on amplification and unknowns. Users were engaged and invested in the accusations facing Mulkey following the press conference.

Discourse Two: Polarizing Mulkey

Mulkey was the central character in social discourses as users named her directly in their responses and quickly took sides, either supporting or defaming Mulkey, which positioned her as a polarizing public figure who was vociferously argued through hostile language. One user offered, “How dare you try to defame a wonderful coach and woman like Kim Mulkey!” This response adopted the narrative presented by Mulkey, one that celebrated her as a leader in women’s sports while criticizing The Post for defamation. This is the type of reaction expected from successful attempts at stealing thunder. Another post offered, “Mulkey going OFF on WaPo!!! You Geaux girl!!! ” This post through language and emojis demonstrated support specifically from users entrenched in the LSU community, using the Louisiana slang “Geaux” often associated with the school and its purple and gold colors.

What Mulkey could not shape was the narrative around the unknown criticisms leveled against her, often in quite profane and downright hate-filled language. One user offered, “mulkey is a fuckin CUNT… but she is sorta spittin’ right here.” In an odd twist, this example offered admiration for Mulkey’s press conference speech in its second part, but also vilified her as a person and her reputation.

Mulkey was also positioned in the discourse as a winner in basketball, but users framed winning as a limited metric of success. For example, one user posted, “The biggest takeaway from this kim Mulkey article: ‘You might be able to win us a championship, but are people going to want to come back and see you?’ Also, Kent Babb can write an article.” Users positioned Mulkey as a winner who is disliked and not trusted. One even implied her approach to sport was outdated and reflected a sense of masculine toxicity from basketball past, “Female Bob Knight. His time passed a long time ago too. Winning doesn’t excuse being a shit human being.”

Although Mulkey was marked as the winner in this discursive frame, users also noted that she was distracted by The Post. This critique came up frequently during game play with comments such as “Mulkey too busy filing WaPo lawsuits to make defensive adjustments.” Mulkey’s performance during LSU’s second-round game was evaluated in the context of the article and her failures were couched as symptoms of distraction. In addition to the mixed responses to Mulkey’s press conference, there were also clear indications that users were not believing her claims. One post read, “I have no idea what WaPo is going to publish, but the fact that Kim Mulkey is a jerk is not the most closely guarded secret.” These posts demonstrated that the appeals to build trust through stealing thunder were not successful.

Since there were no details about the specifics of the article, old critiques resurfaced, especially surrounding Griner, Mulkey’s former player at Baylor who identifies as a black lesbian. Within the discourse of support for Mulkey, there was an existence of disturbing, racist, and homophobic language that drew in Griner for her sexuality and complex history toward her relationship with Mulkey. A user offered,

How dumb are you..? Mulkey sided with nopand the reason they hate her is because she didn't side with the gay black person with the drugs in her bag...she committed the grievous sin of not giving liberals a pass for EVERYTHING crime they commit...such is our sorry media.

Another user conversely claimed, “This is the same woman who fought to stop Brittney Griner’s number from being retired at Baylor because Kim didn’t like that Griner is gay. Yeah, she’s [Mulkey] a steaming pile of garbage. Can’t wait.” However, many tweets supported Mulkey’s stance toward Griner as Mulkey was not involved in Griner’s professional career when she was arrested. Contrary to the intentions of LSU, these posts connect the press conference to Mulkey’s past and position unknown criticisms as true.

Lastly, Mulkey was also framed as a political opinion leader by users and as a proxy for Donald Trump in her criticism of journalists. This was reflected by, “Whatever the story the Washington Post publishes says, we know Kim Mulkey’s odds of becoming Trump’s VP pick are rising….” Comparisons to Trump’s talking points emerged in the discourse as well as connections to the January 6 Capitol attack, MAGA rhetoric, and Richard Nixon. This means Mulkey was able to leverage existing conversations about journalism, power, and trust. However, this move was not always seen as favorable when the comparison between Trump and Mulkey was discursively connected. One user posted, “Trash. Just trash. She has lost her damn mind. She is absolutely Trumpian in her world view and approach to life.” This reaction demonstrates how little Mulkey was able to recover her image in her attempt at stealing thunder.

Discourse Three: Journalistic Merit

The third discourse considers the direct evaluation of The Post and Babb. In her attempt to steal thunder, Mulkey aimed to discredit the newspaper as a primary example of a broader waning journalistic merit. This critique was expressed in an odd context considering the press conference was largely attended by, and inherently intended for, media members. The reaction to this attack was mixed.

Following the press conference, a strong show of support arose for The Post and pointed to the multiple instances where Mulkey could have commented on any context for the purported forthcoming story. One user claimed, “Mulkey at a press conference describing a Washington Post reporter’s painstaking, two year long, journalistic process to write an upcoming story isn’t giving what she thinks it’s giving.” Supporting Babb in this post exemplified how users refrained from loaded, weaponized language that Mulkey employed in her critique. There was a similar snowball effect toward journalism. One user posted, “If there’s an integrity or ethics contest between the @washingtonpost journalist & Kim Mulkey, I’m betting on the journalist.”

Conversely, critique was leveled about the trustworthiness of The Post, often awkwardly using Mulkey as a counterweight in the balance of who to trust. One user offered:

While I'm not a raving Kim Mulkey fan, I 100% believe her and 1,000% support her suing the Washington Post. This sleazy, dishonest form of journalism we see today can only be eradicated in 2 ways: Ignore them until they're bankrupt, or sue them into it. Whatever works.

This dual distrust of both The Post and Mulkey fanned interesting debate and vitriolic levels of disdain toward these social actors. This was not a successful outcome for Mulkey’s aim at stealing thunder, since she was also discursively framed as being untrustworthy.

Some users expressed respect and admiration for Mulkey’s message, especially at the expense of the integrity of the newspaper. One user claimed, “Buckeye fan here with mad respect for Coach Mulkey. Hey WaPo…your days are numbered, your reporters suck, and your journalistic ethics are complete and utter trash. Birdcages would be devalued if your paper is placed in them.” When discrediting the newspaper through support of Mulkey, reactions utilized language similar to her press conference. These responses demonstrated the snowballing of the story, reporter, publication, and ultimately journalistic ethics in her attacks. While these approaches show support for Mulkey, they often demonstrated an existing fandom (i.e., Buckeye fan) to position themselves as a sports fan showing support for another team’s coach.

Criticisms leveled against The Post focused on the timing of the article during the tournament. One user offered, “2 hours before they play is so nasty.” Some even accused The Post of interfering with the outcome of LSU’s eventual Elite Eight loss to Iowa due to the coverage. A user claimed, “WaPo Sports Tempering. No reason to release Kim Mulkey story today.” The proximity to releasing the story before the start of LSU’s game was marked as a mistake on behalf of The Post. That said, the newspaper could not have known whether LSU would advance to that particular round, but reactions pointed toward that disruption since they did make it that far. This discourse connected the press conference, newspaper article, and real-time game play.

Once the article was actually posted online, the curiosity and hype emerging in the first discourse were not reflected in the outcome, as little fanfare was reflected about the actual article or why Mulkey held the preemptive press conference. One user noted, “I don’t see what she got so bent out of shape over.” Reactions in this discourse demonstrated that the stealing thunder tactic was not actually needed in response to the claims Mulkey leveled toward The Post. Users were then more skeptical of Mulkey and her boisterousness. One offered, “Absolutely love that Kim Mulkey flipped out over what amounts to a complete nothingburger of a profile in WaPo. Clearly the behavior of someone with nothing to hide.” Mulkey was not just unable to regain trust through her opening remarks, she actually undercut existing trust with fans.

While Mulkey was successful in her press conference in getting users to discuss the merits of The Post and journalism more generally, she could not fully shape the narrative around the value of the then-unpublished article once it was released, as the digital conversation did not parrot her claims. Thus, her attempt at stealing thunder was limited since the desired critique was not fully adopted by social media users.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Further research is needed to understand how stealing thunder attempts operate when the content of the criticism is known. Additionally, more research is needed to better understand the connection between high-profile women’s head coaches and academic institutions, especially from a critical perspective to understand how class, race, and gender might influence when and how stealing thunder is enacted. Certainly, Mulkey’s class position as the highest-paid coach in women’s basketball and as a privileged white woman is an important factor to consider in how social media users receive her message, react and respond to her messaging, and how her social identity influences perception of her crisis response.

The discursive interchange created by social media users between Mulkey and Trump demands further attention, given the utility of social media as a mouthpiece for political engagement and politicized content. There has been extensive research on the connection between sports and politics, yet further investigation is necessary in the context of media relations and crisis communication practices, especially as it pertains to critiquing journalistic integrity amid a reshaping of the media system and its role in civil society. Lastly, further research will be needed to understand and interrogate the practices of accountability and objectivity garnered by the continuing and increasing visibility of women’s basketball coaches fueled by the sport’s rising public status that provides the coaches more important and authoritative voices in public opinion.