A content analysis of fans’ tweets: the case of foreign cricketers in Pakistan Super League
Keywords:
Twitter, athlete brand, cricket, social media, sport marketing.Abstract
Researchers have agreed upon the importance of social media in regard to establishing athlete brands. In this sense, Twitter is a very important example of social media which represents fans’ perspectives about their favorite (or least favorite) athletes and provides solid fan feedback, which can be helpful in the context of image branding for an athlete. The current study has employed a qualitative content analysis of Twitter users during Pakistan Super League (PSL). The tweets were collected during the 2017 edition of PSL. Data containing #HBLPSL and #PSL was collected and tweets with names of foreign athletes were selected from more than 38,000 tweets. Findings from this study suggested that fans’ tweets about athletes could be separated into two major categories: 1) fan related motives and 2) athlete’ related motives. Fan related motives included sharing: information, visuals, predictions and feedback regarding certain athletes. Athlete’ related motives included: athlete performance, style of celebration and athlete comments. Results of the current study have highlighted the motives that persuaded fans to tweet about a certain athlete during the PSL.Downloads
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