Social media has become an emergent marketing tool that gives parity to small athletic organizations. Though larger sporting leagues may have million dollar budgets for marketing and drawing in fans, less influential leagues and clubs have a disadvantage in their ability to market their events and attract fans. Soccer serves as an example of a sport that has grown significantly on the global platform with leagues in Spain and England flourishing and extending their international reach to all corners of the world. However, countries with less established traditions of soccer and fans affiliation to their respective community and its local soccer clubs must find methods of attracting live spectators. The S.League is an Singaporean professional league for men’s association football clubs. At the highest level of domestic football competition in Singapore, it is the country’s primary football competition. Since its high-profile debut in 1996, attendance at S.League matches has continued to flag, with some clubs struggling financially due to a lack of sponsors, corporate support and spectator support. This study will evaluate the use of social media, specifically Twitter, by the S.League soccer clubs and fans. The dissertation paper is interesting as it looks at audience, subculture, fan culture (loyalty) and participating media. The research aims that will be addressed through this research:1) To assess the social media tools, primarily Twitter, utilized by a selected football league and its clubs to target and communicate with online fans. 2) To identify and select analytics that can effectively evaluate the performance of S-League’s social media communications. 3) To design research that evaluates the efficacy of the selected football league’s social media communications through the selected analytics. 4) To find out why there is a lack of live fan support at local S.League matches. The research will also present the following research question: Does the social media communications utilized by the football league increase online enthusiasm for the soccer league? In essence, the paper will look at the challenges in a particular local league and its football clubs in attracting spectators for live matches. The data harvested will look at how important physical locality, personal history, club followings are in engaging the clubs’ fans. Current theories will then be used to see it it actually matches or goes against what has already been published. Based on what is harvested online (Twitter), why is a certain hastag so popular or why it is not popular and looking at the data/content of tweets. 2nd level based on the diagrams as given by the writer in preceding email is to look who is connected to whom. Maybe 1 fan that is following a club another fan that is following another club. It will look at who is being followed the most and also the density of network for the football clubs in the league. This can also prove that fans don’t just follow their clubs on Twitter but also follow other fans. Look at whether everyone of a club followers is listening to everyone on the network and look at the level of interaction i.e. who is having conversation with whom, who is referring to others and who is mentioning others. The graph will allow to talk about the network characteristics, choice of twitter search and patterns found and then write about what they mean. I would not like to go into very detailed like pets, occupation, etc but locality for one is important as it relates to the ability of the person to also support the club during live matches or is he/she supporting from overseas. For example, the Twitter page will be evaluated by documenting the number of re-tweets that are made by users of the football league content. As Britt (2011) asserted, the efficacy of Twitter can be appropriately evaluated through the volume of communication that is conducted through the platform.

Thus, the sharing of football league tweets through retweeting is an effective method of determining whether the Twitter page is effective in generating enthusiasm among its fans. ** It was recently decided by League that for the upcoming season, the league has slashed the clubs to 10 clubs competing (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/football-s-league-revamp/1453888.html). Therefore, there is expected to be some changes in loyalty from fans and supporters. I am now looking at this angle which I think will also be interesting angle to look at as well and which NodeXL will come in to analyse the data harvested from Twitter. The research aims and scope, which will be further define should look at the following: Please refer to the following draft Research Questions due to the recent events: 1a. How is Twitter used by S.League clubs to target and communicate with online fans? 1b. How is Twitter used by S.League fans to target and communicate with the S.League clubs? 6. What does an analysis of twitter conversations tell us about the negotiation of loyalties following the merging of S.League clubs? Especially with regard to the fans of the disbanded clubs. 6a. How do Twitter dialogues reflect the crisis in S.League? [not a great question] 2a. How effective [in what terms?] are the S.League engagements with their fans using online platforms? 2b. What tools are available to effectively evaluate the performance [performance in what way?] and reach of S.League’s social media communications? 3a. What are fans not going to live S.League matches? 3b. Why do fans attend the live S.League matches? 4. Will fewer teams in the league mean more attendance in the stadium? 5. Is there a shift in terms of loyalty… will they stop following the clubs that were disbanded?

 

1. What happens to the fans of the defunct club/s and the other club that merged with Hougang Utd (Tanjong Pagar and Woodlands Wellington) due to the league going from a 12 teams competition to a 10 club competition next season. Will there be any followings or change of loyalty or if any of the fans Tweeted that they will stop following Sleague. Has this is something that is fresh and new and have not been researched nor looked at before, there was room for research and understanding of fans loyalty and fans whose team are defunct or cease to exist for financial reason etc.

 

2. Mainstream Media discourse regarding the Sleague and compare it with Social Media discourse. (discourse analysis) see if comments in mainstream media covered also what is being said in social media, vice-versa. See what they talk about on social media and compare it to conventional media i.e. using two local Singapore mainstream newspapers (The Straits Times and The New Paper) over a period of two weeks regarding Sleague coverage. If you look at the Sleague teams, you will see some foreign clubs from Japan, Brunei and Malaysia participating. Thus some tweets are in foreign languages but you can see if they can be translated (google translate?) mentioned but if its nothing significant we can just focus on the local clubs data instead.

 

There could be some deductive or even inductive approach. Some of these are mentioned in Alan Bryman – Social Research Methods book, 4th edition in Chapter 13 Coding Textual Analysis and Chapter 22 Conversation / Discourse Analysis Steps of Coding. Analytic Inductive and Grounded Theory.

 

• Times New Roman 12 pt, • Margin of double spaced • Numbered pages • Left pagination Reference style: Harvard style preferred. Expected of Thesis, Fluent scholarly style of writing, Demonstrate a clear understanding of the issues discussed, Able to critically engage with the readings Use of references and resources.