#WeTheNorth: Examining an Online Brand Community Through a Professional Sport Organization’s Hashtag Marketing Campaign

Abstract

The use of hashtags has become an important strategy in digital marketing, anchoring online conversations. The conversations stemming from the use of hashtags can comprise both meaningful dialogue between users and brands, and one-off spontaneous sentiments. As such, hashtags can aid in the formation of a team’s online brand community and can be useful to understand and target key segments of users. In this research, an examination of the Toronto Raptors’ #WeTheNorth campaign in the National Basketball Association was engendered to highlight (a) the types of communication networks formed through the use of the hashtag and (b) the types of segments that are derived from the hashtag (as well as their characteristics). The findings present insights that provide pertinent antecedents for future marketing activities for sport brands as they seek to develop communities of identified fans.

Cyber Racism Toward Black Athletes: A Critical Race Analysis of TexAgs.com Online Brand Community

“…While the results of our study, both illuminating and alarming, only speak to the inner workings of TexAgs, similar OBCs are affiliated with sport teams everywhere. This includes but is not limited to college sport (Clavio, 2008;Love & Hughey, 2015;Love et al, 2017), professional sport in Canada (Naraine et al, 2019), and various levels of European football (Cleland, 2014;Rowe et al, 2010). Moreover, the global significance is apparent as thousands of online fan message boards are present and associated users engage from across continents (Rowe et al, 2010).…”

“…The rise of social media in general has significantly shaped how we gather, distribute, access, consume, and communicate news (Schultz & Sheffer, 2007); our relationships and interactions with others; patterns of participation and power dynamics; and more in both face-to-face encounters and cyberspaces (Kavanagh et al, 2016;Matijaševic ´-Obradovic ´, 2014). While the maturation of social media has informed research on online activity in and through the sport industry (Naraine et al, 2019), further inquiry is warranted in contexts like OBCs broadly, and internet sport message boards in particular, where usage has been rampant but scholarship has been limited (Clavio, 2008;Galily, 2008;Kian et al, 2011;Love & Hughey, 2015).…”

Towards understanding a football club’s social media network: an exploratory case study of Manchester United

“…Typically, media accounts frequently interact with each other while fans interact primarily with other fans. Naraine et al (2019) studied the Twitter community of an NBA team and discovered a “tight knit” network of subcommunities that are not solely associated with the team or even basketball but also associated to the topical keywords extracted from the network. In the cycling domain, Lamirán-Palomares et al (2019) and Lamirán-Palomares (2020) used SNA to discover opinion leaders during an international cycling event.…”

Futbolistas en Twitter. Una plataforma para la autopromoción

“…Las redes sociales han logrado una gran importancia en los clubes gracias a la relación directa que establecen con sus seguidores, quienes buscan informarse directamente de su equipo favorito, más allá de lo que acontece en el terreno de juego los días de partido, y además quieren interactuar con él. Uno de los objetivos más importantes de los clubes profesionales en la actualidad es la fidelización de los seguidores y simpatizantes (Cano, 2017;Vale & Fernandes, 2018;Naraine, Pegoraro & Wear, 2021); lograr que éstos revivan una experiencia holística del fútbol como producto (Thrassou; Vrontis, & Kartakoullis, 2012).…”