Romanian handball, basketball, and volleyball teams on Facebook. A content analysis

Abstract

Sports teams worldwide engage more and more in social media communication. Therefore, a systematic analysis of how Romanian handball, basketball, and volleyball teams communicate on social media is needed. This study looks at the communication strategies of Romanian teams practicing the above-mentioned sports. We analyzed N=10313 Facebook posts published on the official Facebook profiles of N= 21 Romanian sports teams and clubs during 2022. Posts were manually coded based on both formal and content categories such as postdate, type, sport, and topic. Moreover, one of the goals of the present research was to investigate the engagement generated by different sports and topics. The study analyzed the variables at the team level and compared them across sports to determine the differences in communication strategies. Results show significant differences in frequency and engagement across sports and teams. Based on our findings we recommend rethinking the social media communication strategy of Romanian handball, basketball, and volleyball teams.

Keywords

• content analysis
• facebook
• romania
• strategic communication
• team sports