Athletes won’t have to fear any penalties while tweeting at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
The Olympic Committee has set out guidelines for athletes to follow, but won’t completely ban them from using social media.
Among the guidelines are to use “first-person, diary-type formats,” stay away from vulgar language, and don’t report on events as a journalist would.
Athletes will also be allowed to upload photos when they tweet, but not audio or video from inside the venues. Doing any of the latter could earn an athlete a discharge from competing.
You can download the entire document outlining social media guidelines from Olympic.org. (PDF, 41 KB)
During the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, athletes could only blog. Back then, Twitter was relatively new and unfamiliar to the Olympic governing body.
