2025/01/17 by Argyro Elisavet Manoli, Michael Anagnostou, Dimitrios Kolyperas · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Public Relations and Crisis Communication #Sports, Gender, and Society #Media Studies and Communication
paper · doi:10.1080/16184742.2024.2442579
openalex publication_date 2025/01/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
Research question Twitter (X) is often praised as a means for mutual beneficial relationships and dialogue to be built between a sport organisation and its fans, thus encouraging the implementation of Organisational Public Relations (OPR). We examine this proposition by focusing on the use of Twitter by football clubs and their fans to explore the role and nature of OPR and how this evolves when key business decisions are communicated via social media and when fans actively react to such strategic communication.Research methods Content analysis was conducted in six UK football clubs’ tweets when joining and then withdrawing from the European Super League, and in fans’ responses to them, in order to identify how OPR manifests on social media.Results and Findings The findings reveal that fans were displeased with the way in which clubs communicated their decisions while requesting a dialogue with the clubs which is currently missing, and demanding a substantial, respectful and beneficial relationship to be built with them.Implications By focusing on both sides of OPR, the clubs and the fans, in our study, we uncover that OPR can take different forms and shapes when Twitter is used, depending on the directions of the communication and the relationships built. As such, we identify and propose the 4I framework, which takes into account the different forms of relationships between parties and the direction of communication adopted among them, capturing thus the four types of OPR domains, across which organisations and publics ebb and flow.