PSY699: Master of Arts in Psychology Capstone

Poster Submission Guidelines

Congratulations on your poster being accepted for the Week Five Virtual Poster Conference! The Virtual

Conference will provide you with an opportunity to share your work with your colleagues in a

professional poster presentation. Your poster and explanation of the materials presented therein must be

uploadedto your Pathbrite portfolio page no later than Day 3 of Week Five so that you may post the link

to these in the initial post for this discussion.

Poster Guidelines

All information on the poster must be compiled into one PowerPoint slide in Landscape

Orientation. See the template options here: Template 1, Template 2, and Template 3.

The full title of the poster and the name of the author should be shown at the top of the slide.

Enter content for the poster within the appropriate sections of your template and add heading

names as necessary.

Be sure to remove any unused sections of the template.

Any photographs, graphs, or other images must belong to the author or be his/her original

creation and should be large enough to see relevant detail.

Formatting Tips

Be clear and concise with the poster design and content. Overcrowding a poster makes it difficult

to read.

When creating the PowerPoint electronic poster, the preferred font is a 20-point font size. Use a

minimum 16-point font size for ease of reading.

If possible, do not reformat the template, as the requirements for visibility are already built into

the models.

Bibliography

International Journal of Sport Communication, 11(3), 319-338 by Maderer, D., Parganas, P., & Anagnostopoulos, C. (2018). Brand-image communication through social media: The case of European professional football clubs. 

Marketing Intelligence & Planning by Aichner, T. (2019). Football clubs’ social media use and user engagement.

Sport Marketing Quarterly, 29(1), 33-46 by Su, Y., Baker, B., Doyle, J., & Kunkel, T. (2020). Rise of an athlete brand: Factors influencing the social media following of athletes.

*** FIRST FEEDBACK.

Analyze the Differences between Official and Unofficial Social media accounts of the Manchester United football club

Research Question

​The purpose of this research proposal is to help in answering the question, what is the impact of the Manchester United

fans on Social media and their influence on the club? This particular research proposal is also meant to address the

various impacts that both official and unofficial social media platforms have had on the management of Manchester

United football club. For instance, this proposal is meant to address the question of whether the team has efficiently used

the social media platforms to address social injustices such as racism which have gained prevalence in Europe over the years. This particular proposal will also address the question of how the Manchester United football club fans have

efficiently used the social media platforms to oppose the formation of a super league.

These highlighted sections don’t necessarily equate to a direct COMPARISON between official and unofficial?

Critical Review

​On twitter, Manchester united football club enjoys a robust following of twenty-five million. A larger percentage of these

followers are their fans who follow them to gather any relevant news about their favorite players and their favorite coaches.

The various unofficial social media accounts such as Instagram have played a critical role in enhancing the interactions

between the various sport marketers and their fans (Parganas & Anagnostopoulos 2018). The sport marketers have also

used these particular platforms to promote the brand image of their various teams. For instance, in a study conducted by

the authors on some of the most successful football clubs in Europe, they sampled close to 1115 Facebook posts of these

teams together with close to 16, 308 tweets. Their main aim was to address the question of to what extent has the social

media platforms helped these particular teams to promote and make necessary advancements to their brand.

The authors captured the various posts and tweets of these teams when they were in both the off season and in season

sessions of their clubs. They also took into consideration the various levels of fan engagement between these teams and

their loyal supporters. They realized that the football teams tend to use these social media platforms mostly during in

season. This is because the fans of these teams tend to follow so much happenings in the football world during this

particular times. Teams such as Manchester United have heavily invested on the management of their social media

platforms with the aim of achieving the necessary fan satisfaction. Manchester united has also invested heavily in the

proper management of these social media platforms since it is normally used for promoting product related content which

has been proved to attract more social media engagement. They also realized that whenever the team wanted to reach a

wider fan base, they preferred using the unofficial social media platforms because of the wider following that they have.

This particular assertion by Parganas and Anagnostopoulos will is important to this particular proposal since it will help

in answering the research question on how the social media accounts of these teams have impacted on its brand. Their

assertions will also help me in getting the required skills of collecting data that they had used in accessing the relevant

information.

The team also prefers to use its official social media accounts such as twitter to provide relevant developments on the team

to their fans. These social media accounts are also categorized as either official or unofficial accounts. For instance, twitter

is regarded as an official social media account where institutions and teams normally use this particular platform to post

important matters that cannot be posted on other social media accounts such as Instagram. Instagram is regarded as

unofficial account because it is used by the team to update their fans on the various photos that were taken during a

previous game or the videos that are regarded as the highlights of the game

​

Well established European football clubs such as Manchester United have intensified the use of official social media

accounts to enhance the athletic brand of their players. This intensification of social media use has been castigated by the

current trends in sports marketing that have portrayed an athlete brand as one of their most valuable assets (Su et al

2020). While enhancing the athletic brand of their players, the authors have also observed that the team uses these social

media platforms to manage their reputation as well as those of their players. For instance, the club has set a website that

can be accessed and its content read in seven different languages. This particular development has addressed the question

of whether the club is only a European brand or a global brand. This particular study by Su et al will help me in

determining whether Manchester United has put in place the relevant mechanisms that effectively market the individual

brand of their players. I would also use their research to identify the various mechanisms that can be put in place to

efficiently market the brand of players in professional football club.

The club has also devised the mechanism of following fewer social media users in its twitter accounts to help them protect

their reputation from the various instances of negative media. The various official social media accounts such as Facebook

and twitter are prioritized by the various European clubs such as Manchester United because of their official nature. Any

post made on a twitter account will be taken more seriously than a tweet that is done on an Instagram account (Aichner

(2019). Majority of teams’ resort to the various Instagram accounts to update the various photos and short videos of their

teams.

I would also depend on the works of Aichner to develop a proper methodology that would eventually help me in

addressing the research question which is pegged on addressing the various issues that are entrenched in the use of social

media platforms among the various football teams such as Manchester United. I would also keenly follow the steps that the

author undertook to gain various researching skills from his works.

Twitter has also helped Manchester United in enhancing its reputation since the team can use a hashtag to talk to their

fans on the various happenings in the club. These hashtags can also be used in addressing any form of defamation or

slander on the team. Recently, several talks on the creation of a super league emerged and Manchester United was one of

the teams that had expressed its interest. However, majority of the fans of these European teams were against the creation

of the super league. On its twitter account, Manchester United has promoted several tweets in which the team has stood

against racism especially during the Black Lives Matter campaign. This action against racism by the team has contributed

greatly towards reducing its impact.

The fans established several hashtags on twitter accounts threatening to boycott the various attempts by these teams to

join the super league. The fans also organized a YouGov poll in which close to 80% of the fans who took part in the poll

were against its creation. The fans also engaged in roadside protests which proved effective in stopping the breakaway

plans by these various teams. This particular research proposal is important to my work because it has provided me with

an opportunity to learn about the various measures that the team has taken to sensitize their fans on the negative effects of

racism to humanity. The team have also engaged in several campaigns that talk against racism. This proposal is also

important to me because it focuses on the various mechanisms that the fans of these particular teams have engaged in to

challenge the formation of a super league in which Manchester United was to participate in.

​

I am going to also use the works by these authors to establish the various current trends that are not covered in their

writings. For instance, I would use the writings to compare the various measures that have been put by Manchester United

in fighting racism that has become prevalent across the European countries. Its s evident that one of the factors that can

affect the reputation of a team is the manner in which they handle the menace of racial segregation. These studies have

captured the various aspects of social media interactions that these teams engage in. However, in my proposal I am also

going to focus on the various mechanisms that Manchester United has engaged in to sensitize their fans on how the

importance of standing against racism. This sounds good- that you are going to use the academic studies cited (would be

useful for me to have a full reference to the works mentioned) but expand their range to cover racism and other topics