Michael L. Naraine

“Frame-changing” the game: examining the media framing of the mixed martial arts discourse in Ontario

This article extends research on media framing and the concept of “frame-changing” by examining the sanctioning of professional mixed martial arts (MMA) events in Ontario, Canada. After initially indicating that sanctioning MMA was unimportant, the Ontario government shifted its policy and announced it would sanction professional MMA events. A content analysis was conducted on newsprint articles published between 2009 and 2010 that were related to the sanctioning of MMA events in Ontario. After removing syndicated reports, 18 newsprint articles derived from six major Canadian dailies served as the focus for this study. Using open and axial coding techniques, these articles identified that the media produced two frames for the discourse related to the sanctioning of MMA (i.e., legal/ethical and economic), which changed throughout the discourse. This study serves to examine how mainstream media frames the sport in jurisdictions yet to develop a MMA policy.

Activating a global sport sponsorship with social media: an analysis of TOP sponsors, Twitter, and the 2014 Olympic Games.

This research explored the use of Twitter for sponsorship activation by the The Olympic Program (TOP) sponsors during the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games. Using NCapture, a total of 7,519 tweets and retweets of all ten TOP sponsors around the Games were captured from the 1st of January (pre-Olympic) to the 3rd of April, 2014 (post-Olympic). The data were analysed with the aid of Leximancer analytics software. Results show that there is no regular pattern of Twitter use for activation that was identifiable amongst the TOP sponsors; all were found adopting different strategic approaches. Notably, the TOP sponsors differ in terms of the number and types of tweets they produced, retweets they broadcasted, hashtags they rerun, and the registered growth of their followers from pre-games to post-games. The results also show three possible sponsorship objectives communicated by TOP sponsors, namely promotion (of services, products, and companys image), customer appreciation, and athletes encouragement. Potential theoretical and practical implications will be discussed, including suggestions for future research. The work encourages continued investigation.

This Is How We Do It: A Qualitative Approach to National Sport Organizations’ Social-Media Implementation

This study’s purpose was to uncover national sport organizations’ (NSOs) perceptions of social media to understand how social media are situated and implemented. Specifically, the study sought to understand the perceived utility of social media, the rationale for the content produced and disseminated, and the factors affecting social-media implementation. Through semistructured interviews with Canadian NSOs, results were grouped into 3 themes: the value of social media (i.e., benefits, potential, and credibility), social-media use (i.e., content, types of social-media platforms, and rationale/motivations), and the challenges associated with social media (i.e., capacity, language issues, stakeholders engagement or lack thereof, and resistance). NSOs implement social media solely for business-to-consumer purposes. Social media act as a “double-edged sword”: NSOs believe that a good social-media presence requires sufficient resources but remain unconvinced of the “true” strategic value of social media.