Dissertation Proposal: Social Media and Cricket Fan Engagement

This dissertation proposal explores the effectiveness of social media as a tool for cricket clubs and teams to improve engagement with their fan base. It begins by establishing the background of social media's impact on business and its relevance to sports marketing, particularly in creating a strong fan base for cricket. The research aims to analyze the effectiveness of social media in developing contacts between cricketers and their fans, with objectives including identifying the usefulness of social media, analyzing online communication with customers, and providing platforms for player-fan interaction. Key research questions address the importance of social media for cricket clubs and its impact on player-fan communication. The literature review examines branding through social media and studies of athlete communication online, utilizing secondary data sources such as academic journals and articles. The proposed research methodology involves a deductive approach, collecting data from secondary sources and conducting interviews with cricket players and fans. The proposal also outlines a timeline, scope, and limitations of the research, emphasizing its focus on cricket teams and fans while acknowledging potential future extensions to other sports.

Running head: DISSERTATION PROPOSAL
“An evaluation into the effectiveness of social media and whether it can be used by
cricket clubs/teams to improve engagement with their fan base”
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

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Abstract
Social media is a popular and powerful tool for business and bringing advantages. It helps to get
engaged with audience and boost website traffics. Moreover, social networks provide easy
communication and flexibility with mobile internet. In this digital era, many new ways to reach
sports fans has increased for cricket clubs and teams. The following dissertation intends to analyze
the impact of social media. This also demonstrates the kind of technologies that improve contact
with fans.

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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................................3
Background of the Study...................................................................................................................3
Research Aims and Objectives..............................................................................................................3
Aims of the Research.........................................................................................................................3
Objectives of the Research................................................................................................................4
Research Questions............................................................................................................................4
The significance of the Research.......................................................................................................4
Literature Review..................................................................................................................................4
Branding using Social Media.............................................................................................................5
A Study of Athletes and Communicating Online..............................................................................6
Research Methodology..........................................................................................................................7
Timeline.................................................................................................................................................8
Scope......................................................................................................................................................9
Limitations...........................................................................................................................................10
References............................................................................................................................................11

3DISSERTATION PROPOSAL
Introduction
Background of the Study
The social media is a massive game-changer for business as per as interaction with public
and customers are concerned ("Social Media’s Impact On Society", 2018). It started as an
innovative way in today’s digital world making a smart approach towards the current marketplace. It
has become an important tool regarding customer service, public relations and marketing. Moreover,
social media can be used for marketing. It helps in branding the products and services. It can also be
used to develop strong customer relationship management strategies. This establishes a strong and
effective business channel between various industries. In this way, it is seen that sports can use
social media very effectively. It helps them to create a strong fan base for different cricket clubs
("Michael Vaughan: We must make cricket cool for social media generation", 2018). A team or a
club may have fans located in different parts of the world and social media can be the right tool to
connect them to their favorite teams and players (Farrington et al., 2017).
Research Aims and Objectives
Aims of the Research
The aim of the study is to analyze the effectiveness of social media. It also investigates how
social media develop the contacts between cricketers and their fans efficiently.

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Objectives of the Research
The following is the list of objectives for the research:
 To identify the usefulness of social media
 To analyze communication with customers and public at online forums.
 To provide platforms for players to interact with their fans and provide updates.
Research Questions
The following is a set of questions that will be answered through the proposed research:
 How is social media important for cricket clubs and teams?
 Does this innovation enhance the inter-communication between players and fans?
The significance of the Research
The social media is an integral part of all kinds of a communication process in the current
world. The unique characteristics of social media help sports organization to meet the demands of
their fans. Sports have developed visibility. It has helped the fans to seek new ways to get engaged
with the sports industry (Holland, 2015). Thus this research can be used to understand how social
media is more specific at the professional level. Moreover, the study would help to analyze how
various marketing efforts of the sports associations can make use of social media for establishing
public relations.
Literature Review
The literature review has taken help of secondary data source. It is helpful to explore various
parts of the current research. The study of various literature aids in providing a secondary source of

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data that can be used to execute the different parts of the research. The data is sourced from various
academic journals, articles and books.
Branding using Social Media
Branding through social media has grown with the availability of cheap and easily accessible
electronic media through which these social media platforms are being accessed. It is just a recent
finding that social media is useful for branding. It is derived from the idea of “mass-media” and has
been used before the rise of “social media” innovation. Wakefield (2016) showed that the previous
concept was to reach the people who are interested in utilizing the well-known and commonly used
platforms such as radio and television. This idea has been noticed to work for people. The products
whose branding relied on single mode communication had a drawback. This is because various
interested parties are unable to communicate back directly with them. In this way, social media
improved its popularity and priority. This took place all over the media of branding as it provided
two-way communication that helped the organizations to communicate with their customers and vice
versa.
According to Vann, Woodford and Bruns (2015), the customers could talk to the
representatives of the company and sometimes even to the executives to get any information they
would require. Social media thus aided the companies to manage their customer base. Thus they
created a relationship between customer and an organization. This helped in maintaining a
continuous and open communication channel among them. Customer management is being
prioritized in the modern industry as they are the primary source of revenue. Therefore, to reach a
specific customer base social media is being used. Television and radio are becoming obsolete every
passing day as people are focusing more on social media to communicate and fulfill their need for
entertainment, since these sources are readily available. The companies are utilizing the psychology

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of the human mind to approach them through social media platforms, particularly Facebook and
Twitter as shown by Toffoletti (2017).
Thus, organizations have hired various agencies, which were coordinated with creating
content that would attract potential customers. The market became competitive and people were
tending to switch out their old brands. Therefore, customer retention became a necessity, which
could only be fulfilled by maintaining a strong relationship with them. However, Vromen, Xenos
and Loader (2015) mentioned that a strong relationship would entail a strong business pipeline. This
means that the people will be able to connect with the company and get their queries solved.
Similarly, the sports team could use the same technique and connect with the people using social
media platforms. The fans would be able to keep themselves informed about the news and updates
from their teams.
A Study of Athletes and Communicating Online
There have been different opinions about sport and the connection it has with society
(Shahzad et al., 2017). The relationships have been patronized, commercialized, and even turned into
a global business. Some of the athletes have always been motivated by the cheering of their fans
from the stadium stands. In this way, they have been playing an essential role in keeping an athlete
stimulated. Athletes gain popularity by the achievements they have accessed so far. Even so, the
television has played a significant role in highlighting those achievements to the people. Therefore,
the athlete who gets more airtime gets more fans than those athletes who do not understand the
exposure they deserve in the society. In this way, online communication made through social media
helps in gaining various preferences instantly. This takes place when people see the potential and the
communication gap that can be filled by using them. The literature also describes the communication
gap between the athletes and the non-athletes (Leonard, 2016).

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Minimizing the gap is essential for maintaining equilibrium in the society as revenues from
professional sports events are sometimes dependent on the people who attend these games by buying
tickets. However, it must be kept in mind that, on the other hand, they are also dependent on
sponsorship and broadcast groups also. Therefore, it is essential that the athletes and the sports fans
remain connected as much as possible (Shank & Lyberger, 2014). Conventional methods that were
used in the past, such as, writhing fan letters; are slow in nature and most of the times the letters did
not even reach the intended reader. Social media, in this way, has eliminated the entire letter writing
procedure, as now the people can write messages that can get delivered instantly. The platform can
even be used to keep the fans updated about any upcoming event in the future and that will ensure
high attendance at the events.
Research Methodology
Different methodological tools have been used to facilitate research and ensure the desired
outcome (Mustafa et al., 2017). A deductive approach would be followed in this study where various
data would be collected from secondary sources and analysis would be formulated based on the
information gathered. A primary source of data will also be used where five cricket players and five
cricket fans can be approached to conduct interview s. The purpose of these interviews would be to
collect information regarding the use of social media by the cricket players and the level of
motivation that they receive or the level of challenges that they face while using social media
(Leonard, 2016). Another research would be done on the interactions of the collective mass with
their favorite athletes and teams over social media to collect information on the interaction that they
wish to achieve. This information will further aid in analyzing and developing the social media
platforms in matching the requirements of the sports fans.

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Timeline
Task Name Duration Start Finish
Research Project x days
Research Proposal x days
Choosing a research topic x day
Background of the Study x days
Research Aims and
Objectives
x days
Research Questions x days
Research Significance x days
Literature Review and
Data Collection
x days
Reviewing the literature
that is available
x days
Selecting the players and
fans for collecting the
data
x days

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Analyzing the gathered
data
X days
Submission of the Final
Project Paper
x days
Critical Analysis of the
findings
days
Concluding the Findings
of the Study
x days
Recommendations x day
Submitting the Final
Project Report
0 days
Scope
The scope of this research would be to develop the interaction between the cricket teams and
their fans. It is obvious that there are a huge number of other sports that are also played. The list
includes football, baseball, soccer and many more. Quite naturally, there tends to be a vast number
of fans in these sports, who cannot effectively connect with their favorite teams and the players
(Holland, 2015). Therefore, the future scope of the project can be extended to these sports areas as
well. Other less popular games, such as chess can also be branded through this platform, where the
people will be able to interact with more variety of games. More researchers in the future can

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conduct research related to the same domain. It would thus produce a secondary source of data for
further researches.
Limitations
There are many limitations to this research study. The research will be conducted only on
cricket teams and their fans. However, there are a huge number of other sports. Naturally, the teams
belonging to those sports will also have fans. Such communication is not included in the research,
which limits the field of the study. Further, there can be various problems in conducting interviews
with different cricket players. The reason behind this is that the players can be busy in their schedule
and enough time might not be received to pay heed to question them. Moreover, the feedback from
fans might not be sufficient enough. This is because the current research has got a very limited time-
span, budget and lack of experience from members. Most importantly, increasing the sample sizes is
impossible due to budgetary obligations.

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References
English, P. (2016). Twitter’s diffusion in sports journalism: Role models, laggards and followers of
the social media innovation. New Media & Society, 18(3), 484-501.
Farrington, N., Hall, L., Kilvington, D., Price, J., & Saeed, A. (2017). Sport, racism and social
media. Routledge.
Holland, C. P. (2015, May). Internet and Social Media Strategy in Sports Marketing. In ECIS.
Leonard, D. J. (2016). Book review: Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies, The Sociology of
Sports: An Introduction, Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology, Sociological
Perspectives on Sport: The Games Outside the Games and Sociology of North American
Sport.
Michael Vaughan: We must make cricket cool for social media generation. (2018). Evening
Standard. Retrieved 23 April 2018, from https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/cricket/michael-
vaughan-we-must-make-cricket-cool-for-social-media-generation-a3534466.html
Mustafa, R. U., Nawaz, M. S., Lali, M. I. U., Zia, T., & Mehmood, W. (2017). Predicting the cricket
match outcome using crowd opinions on social networks: a comparative study of machine
learning methods. Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, 30(1), 63-76.
Shahzad, B., Lali, I., Nawaz, M. S., Aslam, W., Mustafa, R., & Mashkoor, A. (2017). Discovery and
classification of user interests on social media. Information Discovery and Delivery, 45(3),
130-138.
Shank, M. D., & Lyberger, M. R. (2014). Sports marketing: A strategic perspective. Routledge.

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Sherwood, M., Nicholson, M., & Marjoribanks, T. (2017). Controlling the Message and the
Medium? The impact of sports organisations’ digital and social channels on media
access. Digital Journalism, 5(5), 513-531.
Social Media’s Impact On Society. (2018). The Odyssey Online. Retrieved 23 April 2018, from
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/social-medias-impact-society
Toffoletti, K. (2017). Advertising the 2015 Cricket World Cup: Representing Multicultural Female
Sports Fans. Communication & Sport, 5(2), 226-244.
Vann, P., Woodford, D., & Bruns, A. (2015). Social media and niche sports: The netball ANZ
championship and commonwealth games on twitter. Media International Australia, 155(1),
108-119.
Vromen, A., Xenos, M. A., & Loader, B. (2015). Young people, social media and connective action:
From organisational maintenance to everyday political talk. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(1),
80-100.
Wakefield, K. (2016). Using fan passion to predict attendance, media consumption, and social media
behaviors. Journal of Sport Management, 30(3), 229-247.