Abstract
Shared mental models are a compelling concept that highlights the importance of shared understanding among team members to achieve improved team performance. This study aimed to extract individual mental models from social media posts and explore differences in the shared mental models of successful and unsuccessful teams on example of the FIBA 3x3 Basketball World Cup 2023. Mental models were derived through semantic network analysis employing the textual analytical software Automap. The sample consisted of 368 posts from 39 team members, collected from platforms such as Facebook, X and Instagram. Significant disparities between successful and unsuccessful teams were uncovered, with the former displaying a greater number of concepts and statements, having larger shared cognitive maps. Additionally, the analysis offered insights into gender specific team sharedness, revealing that even though male team members were less verbal, they exhibited a higher degree of sharedness compared to their female counterparts. This study demonstrates the potential of social media data for constructing shared mental models and offers two key contributions: 1) It provides empirical evidence to the literature, and 2) it highlights the viability of social media as a tool for evaluating shared mental models, opening new avenues for research in the field.