NBA Twitter: A 'Slam Dunk' as a Public Relations Tool for Sports Organizations (2016)

Undergraduate: Margaret Engellenner

Faculty Advisor: Lois Boynton
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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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. By monitoring tweets sent from the official Twitter account of the NBA along with six official accounts of its franchises, this thesis investigates what type of content in tweets propagates the most interaction between stakeholders of NBA and its teams.