Social Media for the Win

After reading through numerous blogs from my classmates this week, I noticed a common trend: social media being used for qualitative research.  I found this interesting because I clicked through blogs at random and many of them had to do with conducting qualitative research using social media sites such as Facebook.

Katerina's Blog talked about her favorite show, Glee!, the positive response from fans of one of the main characters.  Katerina said that she had heard things about this actresses personality and wanted to see what her fans thought of her.  She conducted qualitative research by going to the fan page of this actress and reading the
comments about her and found the rumors she heard to be false.  Katerina also made a good point in saying that people may feel more free writing their feelings and opinions on social media sites because its the world wide web.  Everyone expresses their feelings on the internet so it is a prime oppurtunity for organizations to see what is truly being said about their brand.

Laura's Blog also dealt with qualitative research and social media.  What I liked about Laura's blog was the link that she posted.  It provided the reader with message boards about celebrities and people and go and post thoughts and opinions about celebrities on their specific message board.  I never knew such a site existed.  This can be extremely useful for publicists to see what is being said about their clients, good or bad.

The reason that I find it so interesting to use social media as qualitative research is the fact that I did not even think of it.  I always saw qualitative as a formal word and therefore expected formal research studies such as focus groups and interviews.  While writing last weeks blog I was trying to think of creative ways to conduct qualitative research and while using social media may not be considered creative among some, it is an over-looked media outlet and for that reason, and I feel organizations that choose to use it are creative.

Qualitative Research

This week's blog focuses on qualitative research in sports public relations.  Qualitative research is research that is used to gain further insight on behavior and reasons leading to such behaviors.  Examples of qualitative research include focus groups, observations and in-depth interviews with an organization's publics.

In sports public relations, research is very important.  It helps an organizations keep in touch with its publics and learn their feelings and behaviors about the organization.  I found a student paper from Nova Southern University about research between an sports organization and its publics.  In this he states that qualitative research in sports public relations is hard to base information off of because a focus group of 12-15 fans cannot represent the attitudes and behaviors of the hundreds of thousands of fans an organization has.  I agree with this argument because of exactly what was said: you cannot base attitudes and feelings of thousands of people off of 15 people.  I do believe that triangulation (the use of qualitative and quantitative research) is a better way to conduct sports public relations, as in any field of public relations.  For sports public relations, qualitative research can help sports PR professionals by giving them a platform to build research off of.  Through an interview or focus group, PR people are able to see how its publics react to a certain item or idea or their current feelings about an event or story that has occurred.  With this, they can continue to use quantitative research to see if these attitudes and feelings from the focus groups are present in a larger sample.

An example of qualitative research in sports can be seen in a video from an organization “EastLondonLives2012.”  The series of videos on YouTube are focus groups from different sets of publics that will be affected by the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, England.  These focus groups help researchers to gain insight on the excitement, hesitation, and potential fearfulness of the participants in the focus groups.  Although there were many focus groups conducted, the number of participants cannot compare to London’s population, which is just over 7 million people.

Qualitative research can be used for research in sports public relations, but its cannot be the sole form of research for an organization.  Where sports organizations have such a large fan base, the thoughts and feelings of those who were interviewed, observed, or participated in focus groups cannot create a generalized consensus of feelings and affects of the rest of the organizations publics.

Peer Blogs--Part 2

Unobtrusive research can be conducted many ways.  Last week, I focused on secondary research and social forums and how they can be used for research in the field of sports public relations.  This week, our assignment was to read classmates’ blogs and comment on the content in them.  I just realized that I am conducting unobtrusive research because I’m reading what they wrote, writing about it in this blog, and they won’t know about it until after it published onto the site. Interesting.

After reviewing the blogs, I came across Jenn's Blog which interested me because it was about my hometown football team, the New England Patriots.  Year ago the Patriots could've been considered a dynasty.  Some may have wondered how it was all possible and, as Jenn pointed out in her blog, the Patriots were accused, and found guilty, of cheating.  The team had video tapped the defensive calls of the New York Jets.  The example that Jenn presented for unobtrusive research was the fact that the Patriots were tapping the Jets without a form on consent.  I knew that hidden cameras could be used for unobtrusive research and usually a scenario, like a game show, requires consent to use the footage.  I like how she was able to tie the tapping situation involving the Patriots and the Jets to ethics as well.  The Patriots cheated using unobtrusive research and that could be seen as one of the drawbacks of the method, using it as an unfair advantage to get oneself ahead.

I also enjoyed Steph's Blog because she was able to find an example of unobtrusive research that happened right on campus.  Her example came from the school newspaper and the article discussed how someone's wardrobe is a possible indicator of where they're from.  The author walked from one end of campus and back and sat in the dining hall to people watch.  The findings were consistent with what was worn and where people were from.  I thought that this was interesting because of the fact that this could be happening everyday and no one would notice.

Unobtrusive research can be conducted in many ways and tied to many situations.  However, research ethics should be followed at all times and the results should not be used to put someone at an unfair advantage over competition.

Unobtrusive Research--Phillies vs. Reds

Conducting unobtrusive research can be as simple as typing a desired subject into Google and viewing the content of the results given to you.  It’s done almost every day for any subject type whether it’s done for a specific reason or just to find answers for our own satisfaction.  Sports public relations professionals use unobtrusive research everyday to find out how their organization is being talked about among professionals and its publics.

This morning I was browsing Yahoo! Sports in search of some insight on this year’s Major League Baseball Playoffs (considering I haven’t had a lot of time to keep up with the end of the season) and I came across an Associated Press article about Roy Halladay.  The article was titled “Roy Halladay finally gets to make postseason debut.”  This title caught me off guard at first for the small fact that I didn’t realize that in his 13-year-career Halladay has yet to pitch in the post season.  (I’m only twenty so the first few year of his career were somewhat irrelevant to me)  The article, I felt, described Halladay’s integrity and passion for the game.  Phillies’ Manager, Charlie Manuel, was quoted saying, “…he’s very intense, he wants to win, he definitely wants a ring.”  I found this topic very interesting so I decided to conduct further research on Halladay and the Phillies’ upcoming series against the Cincinnati Reds.

I went to Google and searched for blogs about Halladay.  I came across this blog from, again, Yahoo! Sports that describes ten important numbers to the Phillies/Reds upcoming series.  The blog’s main focus is comparing numbers between the two teams and even more so, the playoff experience of the two teams.  Philly has had playoff experience in the past few years from winning the pennant two years ago to being runner’s up last year, but the Reds have not seen playoff action since 1995.

This article and blog are only two of the many beyond many articles and blogs that have been created since the playoff match-ups were announced.  These articles and blogs are important to sports PR practitioners because they offer views and opinions of the teams but they also give fans (or strong non-fans) something to converse about on social forums.  After the first article, there was a comments section for readers to express their opinions on the subject matter.  As of this morning, there were over 50 comments from readers.  Some discussing their praise for the Phillies organization, some discussing their praise for the Reds, and even some Yankee fans trying to get the last word in (as always).  Team organizations can look at these social forums and see the types of topics that are being discussed among their publics.  Even for Yankees, who are basically getting free word of mouth by having their name stamped on a story that has to do with two completely different organizations.

Blogs and articles can help sports PR practitioners view what is being written about their team, players, name, game, event, etc..  Having these tools at their fingertips allows them to take necessary actions about bad press if necessary and keep operations under control.

This article was written using data found through unobtrusive research.  The lives/environment of the subjects were not intruded upon while conducting the research.  That is the purpose of unobtrusive research.