Interdisciplinary Studies in Media and Culture

"Alone like a Magician...#Ali_Karimi", the examination of public opinion about the elections of the Iranian Football Federation: the social construction of reality on Twitter

Document Type : .

Authors

Rasool Norouzi Seyed Hossin 1
Mahdi Latififard 1
Amin Yadegari 2

1 Tarbiat Modares University

2 Shahid Beheshti University

https://doi.org/10.30465/ismc.2022.37681.2439
Abstract
Text-centric social media platforms such as Twitter play an important role in shaping public opinion to the extent that users can frame what they perceive as a reality. The purpose of the present study was to examine public opinion about the Football Federation elections on Twitter. Therefore, after the Football Federation elections, 2531 tweets were extracted by searching for hashtags and Brown and Clark (2006) approach was used to discover the themes, which yielded 57 subthemes. subthemes produced the 7 main themes "Characters and Stars", "Football Community", "Football Structure", "Non-Football", "Media", "Football Emotions" and "Corruption in Football" on Twitter. The findings showed that Twitter helps users create frames that traditional media cannot or do not want to create. Studying frames shows how users use social media to overcome traditional media coverage, provide alternatives, and change perceptions.

Keywords

Framing
Football
Public opinion
Users
Twitter
  1. Adoni, H., & Mane, S. (1984). Media and the social construction of reality: Toward an integration of theory and research. Communication research, 11(3), 323-340.
  2. Attride-Stirling, J. (2001). Thematic networks: an analytic tool for qualitative research. Qualitative research, 1(3), 385-405.
  3. Berger PL and Luckmann T (1971) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology
    of Knowledge. London: Penguin Books.
  4. Blaszka, M., Burch, L.M., Frederick, E.L., Clavio, G., & Walsh, P. (2012). #WorldSeries: An empirical examination of a Twitter hashtag during a major sporting event. International Journal of Sport Communication, 5(4), 435–453.
  5. Blaszka, M., Frederick, E. L., Newman, T., & Pegoraro, A. (2016). Was dissent being displayed during the Sochi Olympics? Examining the #Sochi2014 hashtag for dissent. Global Sport Business Association Journal, 4, 1–13.
  6. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3 (2): 77-101.
  7. Bromberger, C. (2020). Football and the authoritarian regime in Iran. Soccer & Society, 21(6), 692-698.
  8. Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2012). Researching news discussion on Twitter. Journalism Studies, 13(5/6), 801–814.
  9. Bryant, J., & Holt, A. M. (2006). A historical overview of sports and media in the United States. Handbook of sports and media, 21-43.
  10. Burch, L. M., Frederick, E. L., & Pegoraro, A. (2015). Kissing in the carnage: An examination of framing on Twitter during the Vancouver riots. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(3), 399-415.
  11. Chehabi, H. E. (2006). The politics of football in Iran. Soccer & Society, 7(2-3), 233-261.
  12. Christakis, N.A., & Fowler, J.H. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little Brown.
  13. Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2013). It's not just PR: Public relations in society. John Wiley & Sons.
  14. Couldry N and Hepp A (2017) The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  15. Couldry N and Mejias U (2018) Data colonialism: rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. Television & New Media 20: 336–349.
  16. Dadgaran, M. (2003). Public opinion and measurement criteria. Morvarid Publication, Tehran, Iran. (In Persian)
  17. Dousti, M., Goodarzi, M., Asadi, H., & Khabiri, M. (2013). Sport policy in Iran. International journal of sport policy and politics, 5(1), 151-158.
  18. Emery, M. and Emery, E. (1988) The Press and American: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (6th edn.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  19. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51–58.
  20. Fazeli, A. (2012).Sports and identity politics. Research Letter of Polotical science. 2(26). 151-174. (In Persian)
  21. Ferrara, E., De Meo, P., Fiumara, G., & Provetti, A. (2012). The role of strong and weak ties in Facebook: a community structure perspective. arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.0535.
  22. Fountain, C. (1993) Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice. Bridgewater, NJ: Replica.
  23. Frederick, E. L., Pegoraro, A., & Burch, L. M. (2017). Legends worthy of lament: An analysis of self-presentation and user framing on the Legends Football League’s Facebook page. Journal of Sports Media, 12, 169–190.
  24. Frederick, E. L., Stocz, M., & Pegoraro, A. (2016). Prayers, punishment, and perception: An analysis of the response to the Tony Stewart—Kevin Ward Jr. incident on Facebook. Sport in Society, 19, 1460–1477.
  25. Ghasemi, H., Tojari, F., Kohandel, M., & Khodayari, A. (2009). Media activities in sports. Bamdad Ketab Pub. Tehran. Iran. (In Persian)
  26. Granovetter, M.S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380.
  27. Gustin, S. (2011, February 11). Social media sparked, accelerated Egypt’s revolutionary fire. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/business/2011/02/egypts-revolutionaryfire/
  28. Hutchins, B. (2012) Sport on the move:The unfolding impact of mobile communications on the media sport content economy. Journal of Sport and Social Issues. Advance online publication.
  29. Hutchins, B. and Rowe, D. (2012) Sport Beyond Television:The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport. NewYork: Routledge.
  30. Kuypers, J.A. (2002). Press bias and politics: How the media frame controversial issues. Westport, CT: Praeger.
  31. Latififard, M., Saffari, M., Norouzi Seyed Hossini, R., & Bahrani, M. (2020). A Systematic Review of Sports-Related Studies on Social Media. Communication Research, 27(102), 151-169.
  32. Liu, Z., Chen, R., & Newman, J. I. (2021). The football dream of a sleeping dragon: Media framing (s), east–west Geopolitics, and the crisis of the Chinese men’s national team. Communication & Sport, 9(1), 55-87.
  33. Lowery, S.A. and DeFleur, M.L. (1995) Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects (3rd edn.). White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers.
  34. Lü, L., & Zhou, T. (2009, November). Role of weak ties in link prediction of complex networks. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM international workshop on Complex networks meet information & knowledge management (pp. 55-58).
  35. Mallaei, M., & Salimi, A. (2019). Content Analysis of Media Coverage of Corruption in Iran’s Football: Case Study of TV Program 90. Communication Management in Sport Media, 7(2), 111-120. (Persian)
  36. Meraz, S. (2011). The first for “how to think”: Traditional media, social networks and issue Journalism, 12, 107–127.
  37. Meraz, S., & Papacharissi, Z. (2013). Networked gatekeeping and networked framing on
    #Egypt. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18, 138–166.
  38. Moore, J., Hesson, A., & Jones, K. (2015). # NBCFail: Thematic analysis of media and public discourse surrounding editing of Russia’s Olympic gymnastics fall. International Journal of Sport Communication, 8(2), 160-173.
  39. Moritz, B. (2015). The story versus the stream: Digital media’s influence on newspaper sports journalism. International Journal of Sport Communication, 8(4), 397-410.
  40. Nisbet, M. (2010). Knowledge into action: Framing the debates over climate change and In P. D’Angelo & J. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing frame analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 43–83). New York, NY: Routledge.
  41. Onwumechili, C., & Bedeau, K. (2017). Analysis of FIFA’s attempt at image repair. Communication & Sport, 5(4), 407-427.
  42. Real, M.R. (1998) MediaSport:Technology and the commodification of postmodern sport. In L.A.Wenner (ed.), MediaSport (pp. 14–26). London: Routledge.
  43. Rowe, D. (2011) Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  44. Sadeghi, S., & Leng, H. K. (2020). Self-presentation of Iranian football players on Instagram during the 2018 World Cup. Soccer & Society, 1-9.
  45. Sajedi, A. (2020). Implications of Strategic Football Goods on Politics and the International Community: A Case Study of Iranian Football. International Studies Journal (ISJ), 4 (64). 1-22. (In Persian)
  46. Salwen, M.B., & Stacks, D.W. (1996). An integrated approach to communication theory and research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  47. Sanderson, J. (2014). What do we do with Twitter? Communication & Sport, 2, 127–131.
  48. Sanderson, J., & Emmons, B. (2014). Extending and withholding forgiveness to Josh Hamilton: Exploring forgiveness within parasocial interaction. Communication and Sport, 2, 24–47.
  49. Schmidt, S. H., Frederick, E. L., Pegoraro, A., & Spencer, T. C. (2019). An analysis of Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe, and the national anthem protests. Communication & sport, 7(5), 653-677.
  50. Sh., & Afrouzeh. H. (2018). Identifying and Determining the Factors Affecting the Incidence of Corruption in Iran`s Football. Sport Management Studies, 10(47), 39-66. (Persian).
  51. Shilbury, D., Westerbeek, H., Quick, S., Funk, D., & Karg, A. (2014). Strategic sport marketing (4th Ed.). Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
  52. Tewksbury, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). News framing theory and research. In J. Bryant & B. Oliver (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 17–33). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
  53. Till, C. (2021). Propaganda through ‘reflexive control’and the mediated construction of reality. New Media & Society, 23(6), 1362-1378.
  54. Van Riper, T. (2012, February, 3) Sports media rights keep rolling – for now. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2012/03/02/sports-media-rights-keep-rolling-for-now/
  55. Wenner, L. A. (Ed.). (1998). MediaSport. Psychology Press.

Home

Guide for Authors

Submit Manuscript

Reviewers

Contact Us