NBA Twitter | Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Spring 2016 | Thesis adviser: Lois Boynton | Honors level: With Highest Honors
NBA Twitter: A 'Slam Dunk' as a Public Relations Tool for Sports Organizations
by Margaret Engellenner '16
The rise of social media coupled with advancements in technology and communication have been altering the way in which organizations manage their public relations and communicate with their stakeholders and audiences. As a result, organizations have increasingly become compelled to communicate with stakeholders via new media channels - such as social media - rather than traditional sources - like television, radio, newspapers, and magazines - to reach and capture the attention of the largest number of stakeholders as possible. Advancements in technology and communication have consequently altered the expectations of stakeholders: Concise, creative, and quickly communicated messages have become an essential practice of successful public relations. Sports organizations, like the NBA, have been paving the way by embracing these new innovative means of communication. This study coded a sample of tweets sent from the official Twitter account of the NBA along with six official accounts of its franchises to identify types of content they shared, and how their Twitter efforts reflected characteristics of public relations to build relationships with their stakeholders. The results of this study indicate that the NBA and its franchises most frequently tweeted out content for the purposes of entertainment and information sharing, and those types of tweets also received the highest levels of engagement and interaction.
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Many Honors Carolina students cap their undergraduate experience with a Senior Honors Thesis, partnering with a faculty mentor to develop original research or creative work. Students who successfully defend their thesis before a faculty review panel graduate with Honors or Highest Honors. Each year, approximately 350 students complete a Senior Honors Thesis. For many of those students, the thesis becomes a first publication or an important part of their application to graduate or professional school. Students who wish to undertake a Senior Honors Thesis project must have a cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher. Academic departments may set higher thresholds for course work within students’ major field of study.
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