MDA20011 Assignment 1: Social media content analysis

After you have read this information, head over to the Assignment 1 Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.

Assignment Overview

This assignment is designed to give you an appreciation of the evolving relationship between sports media organisations and sports fans through their engagement with social media.

This assignment supports unit learning outcomes 2.

View the Rubric to learn about this assignment's marking criteria.

Limited generative AI permitted

Gen AI may be used for brainstorming, creating structures, and generating ideas for improving work. Any use of Gen AI must be acknowledged, with prompts and outputs included in an appendix.

Note: You can use Swinburne Online's Alvie Assignment Feedback tool for help with assignments, regardless of the permissible level of GenAI use indicated above.

Assignment Details

You will conduct a brief content analysis of a social media site and explore what it tells us about how fans relate to the sport, the organisation and each other.

Steps

Follow these steps to complete your assignment:

Step 1: Choose a social media site

Select a professional sporting entity's social media site, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. You can choose a league, a team, an organisation or a particular player. 

Some examples include:

▢ Carlton Football Club Instagram.

▢ Geelong Football Club Instagram.

▢ Manchester United Instagram.

▢ Sydney FC Instagram.

▢ UFC Instagram.

▢ Paris-Saint Germain Facebook.

Step 2: Create research questions 

Create 2–4 research questions that you intend to explore in relation to your chosen social media site. Your research questions should focus on the relationship between the organisation and their followers. 

Questions that you could consider include:

▢ Is there a particular form of content that is given preference?

▢ Are sponsors given preferential treatment in posts?

▢ How do fans demonstrate their level of engagement? 

▢ Is there evidence of fans BIRGing and CORFing online?

▢ Are particular team members popular or unpopular?

▢ How does team performance affect fan engagement?

What you look for will depend largely on the type of account you choose and what you want to know about their engagement. It is generally best to choose 2–4 questions that you want to investigate.

To help you formulate your research questions, you may like to refer back to the discussion board in Week 2, 2.8 Discussion: Creating research questions, and also the Content analysis video on page 2.7 Content analysis and paths to fandom, where Dr Mark Finn provides some example of research questions.

Step 3: Collect data 

Conduct a content analysis of the material that has been posted over a period of between 1 week and 1 month:

▢ Find particular categories of organisation—fan engagement, promotions, club news—and collect data regarding the social media site's activity.

▢ Code the data from the category or categories you have selected. To do this, you will need to set some parameters around what is counted, for example, what does a positive comment look like? What counts as a negative comment? These parameters will help you to code the data. 

▢ Count up the number within each subcategory that you have selected and set out in a table. See the example in Sporting Facebook: A content analysis of NCAA organizational sport pages and big 12 conference athletic department pages (Wallace, Wilson & Miloch 2011). This research compares the use of Facebook by two sporting organisations. You're only expected to look at the use of one social media platform or online forum being used by one athlete, club or organisation. You can use raw numbers (frequency) and/or percentages in your table. There is an example of this in the Content analysis video on page 2.7 Content analysis and paths to fandom.

▢ Present the information (data collected) in a table (this is not included in the assignment's word count).

Step 4: Discuss and analyse

Write a 500–600 word discussion of what you have found, connecting it where appropriate to the various theories and concepts discussed in Weeks 1–3 (e.g. Giulianotti's taxonomy of of spectator identities, the psychological continuum model, self-categorisation theory etc.) to explain what you have found.

Dr Mark Finn explains how the key theories of the unit are linked and be integrated into your assignments in the video Incorporating theory into assessment.

You may also include screenshots of relevant posts to illustrate your discussion. These can be included in an Appendix. 

Note: The word limit for this assignment is 600–800 words (+/- 10%); however, this does not include the table/s, reference list or Appendix. A document containing a suggested format for this assignment has been provided in the Supporting resources.

Supporting resources 

The following resources will assist you with completing this assignment: 

▢ Check out the Student Hub's useful Study resources, specifically the 'Academic practice' and 'Academic writing and presenting pages.

▢ MDA20011 Assignment 1 suggested structure (DOCX 1.2 MB) Download MDA20011 Assignment 1 suggested structure (DOCX 1.2 MB).

▢ Re-watch the Content analysis video on 2.7 Content analysis and paths to fandom for an overview and example of how to complete this assignment.

▢ Useful research provides a list of sources that you may find helpful to draw upon.

▢ For an example of a content analysis of a social media sports platform, refer to Sporting Facebook: A content analysis of NCAA organizational sport pages and big 12 conference athletic department pages (Wallace, Wilson & Miloch 2011). Please note that this is a large study—your content analysis assignment will be significantly smaller.

▢ Understanding professional athletes' use of Twitter: A content analysis of athlete tweets (Hambrick et al. 2010).

▢ Watch the video Incorporating theory into assessment to help you with your discussion of theories and concepts.

▢ The Study resources section of the Student Hub has a number of tools to help you with completing assignments, including pages to help you with:

1. Researching

2. Writing reflectively

3. Referencing in Swinburne Harvard style

4. Submitting your assignment with Turnitin