Framing tanking : how sports organizations

Framing tanking: how sports organizations

frame self-induced crisis

Name: Federico Bonandrini

Student number: 11367865

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication

Master’s programme Communication Science

Supervisor: dhr. dr. Piet Verhoeven

Abstract

This study seeks to understand the use of communicative frames by the organization, news media and public in the communication of tanking, a particular crisis peculiar to the Ameri-can sport environment. Framing plays a signifiAmeri-cant role in the communication of an organiza-tional crisis since it can shape different interpretations to the issue. It is indeed important a full understanding by public relations practitioners in the use framing in order to minimize through an effective communication the repercussions on the organization. A quantitive con-tent analysis of 993 Tweets from the Philadelphia 76ers, NBA journalists and the public showed an overall positive tone in the communication about tanking by the organization and the public, whereas news media attached to their messages mostly a negative tone. Conflict frame and human interest frame resulted the most employed frames by organization, news media and public.

Introduction

Sport communication represents a crucial asset for the sport industry. Pedersen, Laucella, Miloch and Fielding (2007) define sport communication as “a process by which people in sport, in a sport setting or through a sport endeavor, share symbols as they create meaning through interaction”. Accordingly, it involves the management of the relationships between sport organizations, stakeholders, news media and fans (Pedersen et. all, 2007). Sport communication is an umbrella term that includes different practices like branding, public rela-tions, reputation management, marketing and sponsorship (Wysocki, 2012). Since their intro-duction, social media represented a significant trend in sport communication, especially for the ability to build relationship with the fans (Pedersen et all, 2010; Blaszka, Burch, Freder-ick, Clavio & Walsh, 2012; Sanderson, 2012). Among all, Twitter rose to be the most wide-spread social media among sport organizations (Witkemper, Lim, & Waldburger, 2012). In

particular, sport communication research found Twitter to be an effective tool to spread news about games, players, tickets and to relate with stakeholders (Wang & Zhou, 2015; Wisocki, 2012). On the other hand, little is known on how sports organizations front crisis and difficult situations through their social media channels. Coombs (2007) defines a crisis as “an unpre-dictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes”. A crisis require effective communication response strategies, in order to minimize the damages and to maintain stake-holders’ trust (Coombs, 2012). In crisis communication research, framing theory represents a helpful tool to depict the role of the different actors involved and how they make sense of an issue (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). Framing involves how a communicative source pre-sents and defines a particular issue (De Vreese, 2005). Previous scientific research highlighted that framing is first of all a process (De Vreese, 2005) that takes place in multiple sites such as the communicator, the text and receiver (Entman, 1993). In an organizational crisis three main actors have to make sense of the event: the organization, news media, and the public.

A specific kind of crisis in the sport sector is the so called tanking problem. In particu-lar, it belongs to American professional sport leagues like National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball (MLB) where the relegation of a team in a minor tournament is not possible (Taylor & Trogdon, 2002). In fact, unlike the promotion and relegation system widespread in Europe, teams in US professional sport remain static every season, regardless the results. In order to maintain competitive balance US leagues not only reward the best team, but even the worst ones, allowing them to have a privileged position in the pick of young talents from colleges (Taylor & Trogdon, 2002). In fact, in a static league like the NBA, is important to give to all the 30 teams the same possibilities to win. Teams located in big markets such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago have advantages over other teams because are more appealing for the

best players. Therefore, teams located in small markets have as main option the one to build the team through the draft. For this reason, teams which are not competitive enough can choose to undertake the road of not doing their best to achieve valuable future assets. Many examples occurred in the recent history of the NBA. At the beginning of the 1996-1997 sea-son, the San Antonio Spurs lost their best player for the whole season due to an injury, so they decided not to improve the team in order to enhance their chance to get the number one pro-spect of college basketball, Tim Duncan (Wolfe, 2015). After concluding the season with a record of 20 wins and 62 loss, the Spurs succeeded in getting the young Tim Duncan, chang-ing forever the future of the team. In fact, just two years later the Spurs won their first NBA title paving the way for a bright future for the organization. The Spurs won again in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014.

Since little is known, an insight on how sports organizations and news media make use of communicative frames and how frames shape sports fan reaction could contribute not only to organizational crisis and public relations research but also help partitioners in the management of a similar situation. This leads to the overall research question:

“How do sport organizations and news media frame their communication about tanking, and how does the public reacts to the frame employed?”

Theoretical Background

The main starting point beyond the concept of framing is that an issue can be seen from different points of views and can be packaged in order to foster different interpretations (Chonk & Druckman, 2007). Hence, framing consists in the process through which individu-als develop a particular opinion on relevant events (Gamson & Modigliani,1989). Framing research has its foundation in psychology and sociology fields (Borah, 2011). In particular, the sociological school had impact on framing research because it focused on frames in com-municative acts, trying to analyze the structural attributes employed in the construction of communicative texts (Borah, 2011). Goffman (1974) was one of the firsts to outline the con-cept of framing, referring to it as a framework of interpretation that helps individuals to make meaningful events of everyday life. In line with Goffman, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) define frames as interpretative packages that give meaning to an issue by emphasizing some elements of a topic over others.

Successively, framing has been employed to understand how it can lead to different interpretations in news media (Patterson, 1993; Semetko & Valkenbug, 2000; Scharrer & Bis-sel, 2000). Gitlin (1980) assimilated the concept of framing in the news media research, iden-tifying them as helpful tools for journalists to organize the world and for the audience to in-terpret their reports. In this way, it is possible to identify two different frames to present and make sense of the news: individual and media frames. The former, individual frames, consist of info-processing schemata while the latter, media frames, are the attributes attached to the news itself (Entman,1991). Similarly, Druckman (2001) distinguish between frames in com-munication; structural attributes used in the presentation of a message, and frames in thought; cognitive structures used by individuals to interpret information. The same Entman (1993, p.53) stresses the importance of the mechanisms of selection and salience - “to frame is to

se-lect some aspects of perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral

evalu-ation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’. A key study in news media

framing research is the one conducted by Semetko & Valkenburg (2000). In a content analy-sis of more than 4000 news items they identified five common and reliable frames in the news media: conflict frame, human interest frame, economic consequences frame, morality frame and responsibility frame.

In table 1 the frames are defined:

Table 1.

Frames based on Semetko & Valkenburg (2000, p.95-96)

However, framing research has been characterized by haziness and inconsistency (Scheufele,1999; Borah, 2011). In fact, the term framing is used to label closely-related but different approaches (Scheufele,1999), and often used as a synonym of terms like schema or theme, to the point of being defined as a “scattered conceptualization” (Entman,1993). On the other hand, there is agreement on the fact that framing has to be identified as a communi-cative process (Entman, 1993; De Vreese, 2002; De Vreese, 2005) consisting in three differ-ent stages: frame-building, frame setting and frame consequences (Scheufele, 2000; De Vreese, 2002). The frame building involves the communicator and consists in the structural

the text and can be identified by the presence or absence of certain keywords, images, sources of information, and lexical structures that reinforce the arguments in favor or against a topic (Entman, 1993). Frame setting refers to the interplay between media frames and individuals’ prior frames to the news (De Vreese, 2005) that can result in an adaptation or conflict by indi-viduals to the frame conveyed in the news. Frame consequences are the result from the inter-play of the frame setting and can be analyzed on an individual basis, for example altered atti-tudes toward an issue after the exposure, and on a societal basis, such as shaping public opin-ion (De Vreese, 2005).

The concept of framing has been employed as well to analyze the communication of organizations (Hallahan, 1999; Coombs, 2007; Cornelissen, Carrol and Elving, 2010; van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013). In particular, framing research in the field of mass communication has been used to asses the type of organizational crisis in crisis communication (Coombs, 2007). In fact, the crisis type consist of how the crisis has been framed by the company (Coombs, 2007), in order to shape the individual frames of the stakeholders involved in a cri-sis.

Public Relations and Social Media

As defined by Grunig & Hunt (1984) public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an organization and the public. The aim is to inform pub-lic, customers, investors, commercial partners and other stakeholders in order to maintain a favorable and positive view towards the organization. In the last years the development of so-cial media boosted organization’s ability to interact with stakeholders, media and general pub-lic (Waters, Burnett, Lamm & Lucas, 2007). Through their interactive features social media

enable a two-way communication between the organization and the audience, allowing to move closer to the ideal excellent model of PR identified by Grunig & Hunt (1984) called two-way symmetrical communication. This model considers communication as a tool to ne-gotiate with the public with the aim of resolve eventual conflicts and promote mutual benefits, perspectives, and respect between the organization and key stakeholders (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). In fact, the model not only improves the way organizations “speak” but also the way organizations “listen” (McNamara, 2016).

In particular social media have become popular among sports organizations, team and athletes to engage and establish relationships with their audiences (Pedersen et all, 2010; Blaszka, Burch, Frederick, Clavio & Walsh, 2012; Sanderson, 2012). Among all social media especially Twitter was found to be the most widespread among sports organizations (Fisher, 2009; Sanderson, 2012). Several studies have analyzed how NBA teams communicate on so-cial media (Wysocki, 2012; Wang, Zhou, Kim & Tang, 2014). Through a content analysis of NBA teams Twitter account was found that the clubs used Twitter mainly as a tool to build professionals relationships with followers. In fact, teams were sharing information about the organization, matches, players and for the promotion of tickets (Wang et all, 2014). Moreo-ver, the study showed that a way to manage those professional relationships was the use of hashtags to make easier for the followers to find information and make sense of events related to the team (Wang et all, 2014). Another study, through qualitative interviews with nine social media managers of NBA teams, identified best practices for social media use in the NBA: give quality content, incorporate social media offline, gamify social media efforts, personalize fans on social media, collect fan data, use fans to amplify the team message and track, meas-ure, analyze and adjust team’s strategy (Wysocki, 2012). Gibbs & Haynes (2013) focused es-pecially on which changes Twitter brought for the partitioners focusing on three main clus-ters: media landscape, mechanical job functions and changes specific to sport media relations.

The first cluster refers to lived experiences that changed because of Twitter. This category comprehends the speed of Twitter as news distributor, the increased competition between me-dia and changes in the work schedule due to the continuity of the social meme-dia news flow (Gibbs & Haynes, 2013). The second cluster refers to the new job functions introduced by Twitter. Those consists in a monitoring activity of other teams, journalists, players, media and fans (Gibbs & Haynes, 2013). The third cluster refers to the lived experience in the practice of sport media relations and includes the direct access to the news, bypassing the traditional in-termediary, management control and hierarchical change (Gibbs & Haynes, 2013).

Sport journalism and Social Media

Before the diffusion of social media the distribution of sport news was mainly in the hands of broadcasters and journalists. As highlighted by the study of Gibbs & Haynes (2013) Twitter has emerged as the most used and influential social media in sport communication. In order to understand the impact of Twitter on sport journalism Shultz & Sheffer (2010) carried out a survey among 146 journalists. Against their expectation they found that little has changed in terms of daily news work routine; a possible explanation provided by the authors for this not significant result was the age of the journalists. While the older ones could see twitter as an unwelcome new practice, the younger may have not perceived the difference since they are used to the evolving nature of contemporary journalism. What they found in-stead is that there is a difference between print and broadcast journalists in the evaluation of Twitter, the latter in fact recognized the stand-alone value of Twitter and were more willing to use it (Shultz & Sheffer, 2010). However, they also found that journalists used Twitter as a promotional tool to their articles and that they valued the interactivity of Twitter to communi-cate with their audiences (Shultz & Sheffer, 2010).

Therefore, for the purpose of this research we will take into account Twitter account of younger journalists that work especially for broadcast media.

The interplay between organization, media and public

Organizations, news media, and the public play an important role in the organizational framing research. Previous studies tried to asses the relationship between the frames devel-oped by the three actors (Cornelissen, Carrol & Elving, 2010; Verhoeven, 2016; van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013) . Cornelissen, Carrol and Elving (2010) developed a conceptual frame-work of communicative interactions between PR professionals of commercial organizations and journalists. Building upon the concept of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) they argue that PR professionals’ and journalists’ sensemaking is an antecedent of framing. Through sensemak-ing individuals within an organization or a news media make sense of internal or external events that need to be made understandable to themselves and others (Weick, 1995). In a sec-ond moment, after being shaped by personal identities, individual sense making is shaped also by organizational identity resulting in the final frame attached to the communication (Cornel-issen et all, 2010). Those different frames after a process of negotiation can be similar or con-flicting depending on personal and organizational identities (Cornelissen et all, 2010). Simi-larly, Verhoeven (2016) categorized and synthesized previous research on organizations, me-dia, and public relationships in a corporate framing mediated-moderation model (CFMM). According to the CFMM model, the relationship between organization and media is charac-terized by an interdependence on three levels: (a) individual, between the PR professionals and the journalists (b) organizational, between media editorial choice and PR, marketing, and advertising departments of the organization (c) macro-societal, where the competences of PR are constantly increasing while the ones of journalists are characterized by a decreasing pro-fessionalization due to the rise of 2.0 technologies (Verhoeven, 2016). In addition, the CFMM

model highlights the role of the relationship between PR professionals and journalists as a mediator of the relationship between corporate and media frames, and the role of culture of the organizations as moderator of the relationships PR professionals and journalist and corpo-rate and media frames (Verhoeven, 2016). Moreover, the CFMM model allows to test six dif-ferent general hypotheses. The first one seems the most relevant “media frames are more of-ten the same as corporate frame than they are not” (Verhoeven, 2016). In short, both models recognize that the public frame is a result from the interplay between corporate and media frames, that are influenced by individual identity, relationship between PR professionals and journalists and organizational culture.

The combination of the models represents the basis for specific research questions:

RQ1: Which tone is most employed in the communication about tanking by the Philadelphia 76ers, by the news media and by the public?

RQ2: Which frames are most employed in the communication about tanking by the Philadel-phia 76ers, the news media and by the public?

Method

To answer to the research question “How do sport organizations and news media

frame their communication about tanking, and how does the public reacts to the frame em-ployed?”, the case of the Philadelphia 76ers tanking strategies from 2013 to 2016 will be

used. The Philadelphia 76ers are a professional basketball team that plays in the american Na-tional Basketball Association (NBA). In 2013, the team started a rebuilding process through losing game on purpose, an issue known in american professional sport as tanking, allowed by the NBA tournament features. According to tournament theory (Lazear and Rosen, 1981) the greater the reward the greater will be the effort performed by the agent in play. Therefore in professional sports better performances translate in better chances to win a championship.

However leagues like the NBA, in order to maintain competitive balance, have rewards not only for the best team but also for the worst ones. This reward consist in a higher probability to choose a talented young player from college sport in the annual entry draft. Therefore, for a team not good enough to win the championship losing represent an optimal way to reach a reward and improve their chances to compete in the future. Tanking was adopted by several NBA teams in the past (Hallisey, 2016) but none of those teams did it in such a systematic and conscious way as the 76ers. In the seasons before the arrival of the new General Manager Sam Hinkie, the team was stuck in a mediocrity limbo, unable to compete for the champion-ship and not weak enough to get a star from the draft. In the light of, Philadelphia manage-ment decided to initiate a new phase for the organization implemanage-menting a priori a tanking strategy and building trough the draft a team able to compete in the years for the NBA tiltle. As a consequence, the team traded all their best players in exchange of future assets like young players and draft picks. The use of tanking clearly represent a threat for a team under several points of view concerning vital aspects of the organization such as economic damage, reputation, relationship with fans and relationship with media.

This research will focus especially on how the organization Philadelphia 76ers and sports media communicated this process, from a perspective of framing. Through a content analysis of the Philadelphia 76ers official Twitter account in the time period between the May 5, 2013 to April 7, 2016 (n= 283) and the personal Twitter account of the most influential NBA journalists (n= 72) the use of communicative frames will be investigated. In addition, public’s comments on 76ers Twitter account (n= 481) and journalists accounts (n= 157) will be analyzed to test whether frames stimulate different reactions in the fans. The total sample is therefore composed by 993 Tweets (N= 993).

In the first place, the research will focus on the frame building by PR professionals of the 76ers. The data collection period coincide with the hiring and the layoff of the General Man-ager of the team, Sam Hinkie, who started the tanking strategy.

Secondly, the focus will be on the frame building by news media. Previous research not only focused on the corporate side alone but also on how Twitter is changing sport journalism (Shultz&Sheffer, 2010; Gibbs&Haynes, 2013). Shultz and Sheffer (2010) found that Twitter is used by journalists in particular for two reasons: as a promotional tool to catch the attention of the readers to their articles and as an interactive instrument to directly communicate with fans.

Lastly, the research the focus will be on the frame setting and consequences analyzing fans comments on the posts by the Philadelphia 76ers and sport journalists to understand whether different sources and/or different frames employed by the sources shape different reactions. Twitter represents the best medium where to proceed, since its introduction in 2006 obtained considerable success among athletes, teams, coaches, fans and journalists (Sanderson, 2012), especially in the USA.

Data Collection

The data have been manually collected from the Twitter account of the Philadelphia 76ers, from the Twitter account of 12 NBA journalists, and from the public’s comments from the tweets selected in the time period from May 5, 2013 to April 7, 2016.

Data from the organization have been retrieved through the Twitter Advanced Research tool inserting in the search bar the fields regarding the user of interest (@sixers) and the time peri-od over mentioned. The Tweets took into consideration had to be related with the communi-cation of the results of the games, to the communicommuni-cation of a trade of players or the sign of

free agents, or to statements from the management of the team, for a total sample of 283 tweets.

In the same way, data from journalists have also been retrieved through the Twitter Advanced Research tool inserting in the research fields the Twitter account of the journalists, the time period and the key words “Philadelphia”, “76ers”, and “Hinkie” in order to only obtain the tweets related to the Philadelphia 76ers for a total sample of 72 tweets.

The journalist selected had to meet two requirements: to be working or to have worked in a broadcast news media and to have at least 100.000 followers on Twitter. The journalist select-ed are:

- Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA), 606.000 followers, ESPN (9 tweets) - Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons), 6,4 million followers, HBO (8 tweets) - Stephen A. Smith (@stephenasmith), 3.23 million followers, TNT (4 tweets) - David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt), 650.000 followers, TNT (2 tweets)

- J.A. Adande (@jadande), 642.000 followers, ESPN (5 tweets)

- Chris Sheridan (@sheridanhoops), 124.000 followers, ESPN (1 tweet)

- Howard Beck (@HowardBeck), 174.000 followers, Bleacher Report (3 tweets) - Ric Bucher (@RicBucher), 838.000 followers, ESPN (4 tweets)

- Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanEspn), 228.000 followers, ESPN (5 tweets)

- Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA), 262.000 followers, HoopsHype (8 tweets) - Chris Mannix, (@ChrisMannixYs), 161.000 followers, YahooSport (5 tweets) - Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) 102.000 followers, The Athletic (18 tweets)

Data from the public have been retrieved from the comments on the Tweets selected from the team (n= 481) and from journalist (n= 157). To be part of the analysis comments had to be related with the topic of the message, written in an understandable English, and only related to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Codebook Development

In order to compare and investigate the frames and the tone employed by the organiza-tion, news media, and the public a codebook including the variables present in the research question has been constructed.

The codebook consists of 30 variables, divided in different sections. The first section encom-passes four administrative variables used to label the Tweets analyzed, such as the coder iden-tity, the source and the publication date of the message, and the code assessed during the data collection process. Successively, five variables assessed formal characteristics of the Tweets such as the length, the inclusion of pictures, videos, emoticons, quotes and link to others web-sites (Seargeant & Tagg, 2014). The remaining items assessed the tone of the message and the presence of the communicative frames identified by Semetko & Valkenburg (2000).

The Conflict Frame (4 items) explores if different shades of conflict are present in the mes-sage: Q13 refers to the presence of disagreement between parties or individuals, Q14 whether one party or individual reproach another one, Q15 whether the message refers to different opinions on the same topic, Q16 if there is mention in the message of winners and losers. The Human Interest frame (5 items), refers to the presence of human faces or linguistic devic-es as a way to emotionalize the audience: Q17 explicitly asks if a human example is prdevic-esent in the message, Q18 if the message contains particular adjectives or personal vignettes that may generate positive or negative feelings in the audience, Q19 examines if the message involves a mention of stakeholders affected by tanking, Q20 if the message goes inside the private life of the actors, Q21 if there are visual information like pictures or video that may generate feel-ings in the reader.

Economic Consequence Frame (3 items), explores the economic consequences of tanking: Q22 refers to the explicit mention of financial losses or gains for the 76ers, Q23 refers to the

specific costs that tanking caused to the organization, fans and stakeholders, Q24 whether the are economic consequences for the organization after pursuing a specific action.

Morality Frame (3 items), explores whether the message contains some moral prescription: Q25 refers to an action by the organization in line with what is expected from the public, Q26 refers to an explicit mention of morality or God, Q27 if the message refers on how to behave in a certain way.

Responsibility frame (4 items) investigates whether there is mention of organizational’s re-sponsibility about tanking: Q29 refers to the management as part that could solve the prob-lem, Q30 if the message refers a solution to the probprob-lem, Q31 if the message indicates another responsible rather than the organization for the problem, Q32 whether the message asks for an urgent solution to the problem. For every item, detailed instructions and coding guidelines has been defined and attached in the codebook (see appendix).

Before proceeding withe the coding procedure, the codebook was tested with an intercoder reliability test (ICR) where the 10% of the sample ha been coded by the researcher and anoth-er codanoth-er. To asses the value of the Krippendorff’s Alpha on the variables involving frames and tone, the online tool ReCal OIR by Professor Deen Freelon was used (Freelon, 2013). In table 2 the results of the ICR:

Table 2. ICR results

The items Q14 and Q19 have a low Alpha value, but given the high percentage of agreement, respectively 96% and 98%, both Items are considered as reliable. For items Q15, Q21, Q22,

Q23, Q24, Q25, Q26, Q27, Q31, Q32 the Alpha is not calculated because all the values were negative, but are still considered reliable as the percent of agreement for all the items is 100%.

According to Semetko e Valkenburg (2000), before proceeding with the hypotheses testing new scales including the frame items have been computed and tested for internal valid-ity. “Conflict Frame” scale was composed by 4 items with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .81, “Hu-man Interest Frame” scale by 5 items with an Alpha of .69, “Responsibility Frame” scale by 4 items with an Alpha of .75, “Morality Frame” scale by 3 items with an Alpha of .77, and “Economic Consequences Frame” scale by 3 items with an Alpha of .66.

The variable tone (measured on a 3 point scale with 1=negative, 2=neutral, and 3=meaning positive), had a mean of 2.08 (SD=.89) and a mode of 3. In the total sample (N=933) the most used tone was positive (44.1%) followed by negative (36.2%) and neutral (19.7%). The most used tone by the organization was neutral, while journalist used more the negative tone. On the other hand, both public response to the organization and news media was characterized by a positive tone. In table 3 descriptives are reported:

Table 3.

Tone descriptives

Regarding frames, the most recurrent ones on the whole sample (N=993) are the Human In-terest frame (M=.11, SD=.13), and the Conflict frame (M=.09, SD=.13). Responsibility frame (M=.01,SD=.06) was the third most employed, while Economic and Morality frame resulted as the less used in the communication about tanking. Moreover, the Human Interest frame

was also the most used by the journalist (M=.19, SD=.11) and the public both towards the or-ganization (M=.08, SD=12) and the news media (M=.11,SD=.12), and the second most recur-rent by the Philadelphia 76ers (M=.14, SD=.14). The dominant frame attached by the organi-zation to their communication was the conflict frame (M=.2, SD=.1). Economic and Respon-sibility frame have never been used by the 76ers while the journalist never used the Economic frame. All the descriptives about frames in table 4:

Table 4.

Frames descriptives

To answer to RQ1, multiple T-test have been performed with tone as independent variable and the “source of the message” as dependent variable. Since the variable “source of the mes-sage” was composed by 4 groups (Philadelphia 76ers, Journalist, Public response to 76ers and public response to journalists) has been recoded into 3 different variables composed by only two groups to make them comparable. The first variable included the Philadelphia 76ers and the Journalist and has been renamed as “PhilaJourn”, the second one included the Philadelph-ia 76ers and the public and has been renamed as “PhilaPublic”, while the third varPhiladelph-iable in-cluded journalists and public and has been renamed as “JournPublic”.

To check whether there is a significant different between the tone employed by the organiza-tion and by news media an independent sample T-Test has been carried out with tone as inde-pendent variable and “PhilaJourn” as deinde-pendent. The Levene test is not significant therefore equal variances is assumed. There is a statistically significant difference between the tone employed by the Philadelphia 76ers (M=2.24, SD=.72) and the tone employed by the journal-ists (M=1.82, SD=.78), t (353)= 4.42, p <.001, 95% CI [.24, .61], d= 0.56. Therefore, it ap-pears from the comparison that the Philadelphia 76ers and the journalists use different tones to frame the communication about tanking, the organization does it in a more positive way, while the media in a more negatively. As indicated by the Cohen’s D, the size of this differ-ence is medium.

In oder to test whether a significant difference is present regarding the tone employed by the organization and the public, an independent sample T-Test has been performed with tone as independent variable and “PhilaPublic” ad dependent. The Levene test is significant therefore the equal variance is not assumed. There is a statistically significant difference between the tone employed by the Philadelphia 76ers (M=2.24, SD=.72) and the public (M=2.02,

SD=.96),t (721.34)=3.59, p <.0001, 95% CI [.1, .34], d=0.26. For this reason is possible to

state that between the organization and the public there is a small difference in the use of tone, more positive for the organization.

Lastly, to test the difference in tone between news media and public, an independent sample T-Test has been carried out with tone as independent variable and “JournPublic” as depend-ent. The Levene test is significant therefore equal variances is not assumed. There is statically significant difference between the tone used by the journalists (M=1.82, SD=.78) and the pub-lic (M=2.07, SD=.97), t(170.25)= -2.09, p=.038, 95% CI [-.49, -.01], d=0.28. Also in this case, between journalists and public is present a small difference in the use of tone, whereas the public frame it in a more positive way then the journalists.

To answer to RQ2, multiple one-way ANOVA have been conducted with the 5 scales of frame as dependent variables and with the variable “source of the message” as independ-ent.

The first ANOVA highlighted a statistically significant difference in the use of conflict frame between the Philadelphia 76ers (M=.2, SD=.1), the journalists (M=.06, SD=.14), and the pub-lic responding to the organization (M=.03, SD=.1) and to the news media (M=.08, SD=.13),

F(3, 989)=152.93, p <.001, η2= 0.32. The statistically significant difference is present be-tween the Philadelphia 76ers and the journalists (Mdifference=.14, p <.001), the 76ers and the public response to the organization(Mdifference =.17, p <.001), the 76ers and the public response to journalists (Mdifference= .11, p <.001), and the public response to the organization and the media (Mdifference=-.05, p <.001). Instead, no statistically significant difference was found be-tween the journalists and the public response to the team (Mdifference=.03, p=.096) and the jour-nalists and the public response to the news media (Mdifference= -.02, p=.834).

Regarding the human interest frame, the ANOVA found a statistically significant difference between the Philadelphia 76ers (M=.14, SD=.14), news media (M=.19, SD=.11), public re-sponse to 76ers (M=.08, SD.12) and public rere-sponse to news media (M=.11, SD=.12),

F(3,989)=25.74, p <.001, η2=.07. The statistically significant difference is observed between the 76ers and the journalists (Mdifference= -.05, p=.023), the 76ers and the public response to the organization (Mdifference=.06, p <.001), the journalist and both public response to 76ers (M differ-ence=.11, p <.001) and public response to journalists (Mdifference= .08, p <.001). In addition, a statistically significant difference is present also between public response to 76ers and public response to journalists (Mdifference=.03, p=.47).

Economic frame has never been used by the organization and by news media, and only in small part by the 76ers (M=.01, SD=.06) and the public response to journalists (M=.002,

F(3,989)=3.36, p=.018, η2=.01. The statically significant difference is only present between the public response to the 76ers and the same 76ers (Mdifference= .01, p=.026).

The ANOVA including the morality frame did not show any significant difference between the 76ers (M=.003, SD=.03), the journalists (M=.005, SD=.04), public response to 76ers (M=.001, SD=.02) and the public response to news media (M=.004, SD=.04), F(3, 989)=.63,

p=.595.

The last ANOVA including the responsibility frame, showed as well a statistically significant difference between the Philadelphia 76ers, that has never employed this frame, the journalists (M=.02, SD=.06), the public response to the 76ers (M=.02, SD=.08) and public response to journalists (M=.02, SD=.07), F(3, 989)=6.05, p <.001, η2=.02. The difference was found be-tween the 76ers and the public response to the organization (Mdifference=.02, p=.002) and the 76ers and the public response to journalists (Mdifference=-.02, p=.002).

Discussion

The research provides an insight on how sport organizations, news media and public, through their social media channels, manage the communications during a period of crisis investigat-ing the use of communicative frames and tone. Tankinvestigat-ing is a particular kind of crisis in which a sportive organization, purposefully, puts itself in a danger situation in order to have more possibilities to better compete in the future.

The results show the prevalence of an overall positive tone regarding the tanking strategies of the Philadelphia 76ers. In particular, the team employed a neutral/positive tone, the journalists presented their messages about tanking mostly in a negative way, while both public response to organization and news media framed it mostly in a positive way.

Previous research highlighted that usually media frames are more often the same as corporate frames than they are not (Verhoeven, 2016), but also that the professional and organizational identity of the journalist affects the final media frame (Cornelissen et all, 2010). The journal-ists sample was composed by 12 journaljournal-ists, of whom 6 were against the tanking strategy by the Philadelphia 76ers (Bill Simmons, Stephen A. Smith, Ric Bucher, Jeff Goodman,Chris Mannix, J Adande), 3 journalists in favor of the tanking (Zach Lowe, Derek Bodner, Alex Kennedy), and 3 neutral (David Aldridge, Chris Sheridan, Howard Beck). In particular, for the journalists against the tanking their organizational identity played an important role in the negative tone attached to their messages (Cornelissen et all, 2010). In fact, Stephen A Smith and Bill Simmons are known to be journalists that cover especially the news about the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics, respectively, two historical rivals of the Philadelphia 76ers. Regarding the other journalists that framed the tanking issue negatively, according to Cornelissen, Carrol, and Eleving (2010), their professional identity could have played a role in considering the choice to not-compete as a debatable strategy to employ in a sporting envi-ronment based on competition.

Despite the fact that in the three years of tanking the team won a total of 47 matches on the 246 played (including a 26 game losing streak in 2013-14 season), surprisingly, both the pub-lic response to the organization and media were characterized by a slightly positive tone. A possible explanation for the positive tone employed by the public response to the organiza-tion, could be the combination of the use of the conflict and human interest frames by the Philadelphia 76ers PR professionals. The Conflict frame, present in every message about the results of the games because referring to winners and losers, was usually combined with a human interest frame that mitigated the (usually) bad result of the games with a human face such as a good performance of a player or the words of the GM and the Coach. In fact, the human interest frame is mostly used to emotionalize the audience through an human face,

with the goal to capture and retain public attention (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). Another important aspect of the use of the human interest frame was the hashtag “together we build” (#togetherwebuild) created by the 76ers. The presence of the hashtag automatically conferred a positive tone to the message, with the purpose of helping the public to make sense of the bad team’s results, and to involve them in the rebuilding process (Wang et all., 2014). In this way, every loss, is presented as a step in the right direction: build a brighter future of the or-ganization. Given the results, is possible to conclude that the 76ers tried and largely succeed-ed to use their PR activities in the more efficient way, as theorizsucceed-ed by Gruning & Hunt (1984): a tool to negotiate and resolve problems with the audience.

On the other hand, the positive tone expressed by the public in response to the news media could be explained as a reaction to the same use of the conflict and human interest frame by the journalists. In this case, conflict frame is used by the journalists as a signal of disagree-ment towards the tanking, and the prevalence of a negative tone suggests that the use of the human interests frame was mainly addressed to critique the management of the team. In fact, the significant higher use of conflict frame by the public response to journalists than the pub-lic response to the 76ers supports this explanation, meaning more disagreement towards the tone used by the journalists.

The predominance of a positive tone does not mean that all the fans supported the tanking strategy. While for some part the hope for a brighter future was enough to support the team, for others the tanking represented a break to the trust between the fans and the team. The sig-nificant higher use of the economic consequence frame by the public response to the 76ers shows that fans mentioned economic losses (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000) for the team, such as lower willingness to buy tickets and pay-tv subscriptions, as a consequence of the bad re-sults.

The 76ers, in the attempt to frame their communication in the most positive way, never used in their communication about tanking the responsibility and the economic frames.

In fact, as an organizational communicative choice, through framing they decided to empha-size some elements, like human face and emotions, rather than others (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989).

The unused economic frame by news media suggests that the journalists, since their identity of sportive journalists (Cornelissen et all, 2010), were more focused on the team’s results on the court rather then outside.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

The research presents two main limitations. As first, an automatic data collection procedure would be more accurate and advisable. In fact, given the impossibility to use specific tools to download the Tweets since the time period (2013-2016) was too far back in time, the re-searcher manually selected the tweets of interest through screenshots directly from the Phila-delphia 76ers official Twitter account, journalists Twitter accounts and the related comments. A selection of the tweets after the download of the whole sample would have facilitated the sampling procedure, the labelling and the subsequent coding.

Secondly, a different sample of journalists in terms of dimension and composition may lead to different results. In fact the journalist sample for this research (n=72) can be considered small if compared to the bigger samples of the 76ers and the public responses. In addition,

the number of journalists against tanking in the sample was bigger than the one in favor or neutral. Since the number of tweets per journalists was not as large as the number of tweets from the team and the public, it would be advisable for future research to enlarge the sample through articles, blogs, interviews of journalists, in order to have a more complete overview.

The main suggestion for future research would be to expand this research even to others so-cial media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to check the consistency of the results, and investigate whether there are framing differences across different media.

Conclusions

The choice of undergoing a tanking strategy represents a serious threat for a sportive organi-zation. The particular case of the Philadelphia 76ers resulted an interesting example to ana-lyze because no one ever did it in such a conscious and systematic way. Several teams in the past explored the tanking way as a bittersweet remedy to a season below the expectations but the 76ers, with the figure of Sam Hinkie as advocate, elevated the tanking as the primary or-ganizational strategy.

For this reason, the research treated Philadelphia’s tanking as a particular kind of organiza-tional crisis with the harmful power to disrupt the relationships with organizaorganiza-tional stakehold-ers (Coombs, 2007), and in particular with the most important stakeholder for a sportive or-ganization: the fans.

In order to sustain a tanking strategy the communicative organs of the organization, nowadays empowered by social media, have to find an effective way to make sense of this situation for the news media and the public (Coombs, 2012).

Through a framing perspective, this research explored how the organization, the news media and the public interpreted the tanking and what kind of relationships is present between this three entities in the digital environment of Twitter.

The quantitative content analysis highlighted that the organization through the use of commu-nicative frames succeeded in fostering an overall positive perception among the public. In fact, through the mechanisms of selection and salience (Entman, 1993) the organization

ob-tained an overall positive response from the public even though the results of the team, prima-ry way of evaluation for a sportive organization, were more than mediocre.

On the other hand, news media in contrast with previous research (Verhoeven, 2016), did not adapt to the frame used by the organization and they framed their communication about tank-ing mostly in a negative way.

The positive response from the public to the negative tone employed by news media is nota-ble, as a proof of the ability of the organization to attach a persistent positive frame to the sit-uation.

Finally, this research contributes to the existing literature showing how sport organizations make use of communicative frames during a crisis situation and how this frames can shape the perception of the public, despite the results of the team.

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Appendix

Codebook

General Information and post selection criteria

This codebook has been constructed to analyze the tanking strategy employed by the Phila-delphia 76ers between 2013 and 2016. In order to examine the research question “How do

sport organizations and news media frame their communication about tanking, and how does the public reacts to the frame employed?” content from Philadelphia 76ers official Twitter

account (https://twitter.com/sixers?lang=it) and from from NBA journalists will be coded. In addition, also the comments by the public will be coded.

Posts mentioning at least one of the following aspects will be considered as related to the tanking strategy:

- message is related to results of games involving Philadelphia 76ers; - message is related to the effects/consequences of a trade of players; - message is related to the the word tanking;

- message is related to the management of the Philadelphia 76ers; - message expresses a quality opinion about 76ers management; - message gives information about the organization and its strategy.

The sample for this research consists in Tweets by the Philadelphia 76ers, Tweets by NBA journalist, and comments on the Tweets by the team and the journalists between the 5th of May 2013 and the 7th of April 2017. This time period correspond to the hiring and the layoff of Sam Hinkie, General Manager of the team and the mind behind the tanking strategy. After the data collection every study item is coded according the following procedure:

First of all, administrative codes are distributed for general information regarding the study item. This regards for example the coder, the source of the study item (Organization, Journal-ist, Public) and the date of publishing.

Secondly, different variables are coded in order to examine the language, tone, frames.

Coding Guidelines

As Twitter often includes multimedia content it needed to be defined which content is coded. For the purpose of the research, it has been decided to only code for written language and ex-clude videos and images.

a tweet consisting of a picture with text → text on the picture is coded as well

a tweet linking to other item such as press release, press article, videos → item is not coded a tweet containing a gif → gif is not coded

Variables

A. Administrative Variables Q1: CODERID

What is your coder ID? 1.Federico Bonandrini

2. Second coder for reliability test

Q2: SOURCE

What is the source of the message? 1. Philadelphia 76ers Twitter Account 2. Journalist Twitter Account

3. Public responses

Q3: DATE

What is the publication date of the message? Date as DD-MM-JJJJ

Q4: POSTNAME

1. Philadelphia 76ers tweets named as name of the team and number of the tweet (e.g. 76ers1, 76ers2, 76ers15…)

2. Journalists Tweets named as journalist’s first name letter, surname, number of the tweet (e.g. JGoodman1)

3. Public responses named as PT for 76ers account and PJ for journalists account, (e.g. PT1 / PJ1)

B. Substantive Variables

B1. Language Q5: LENGTH

What is the length of the message? Count the number of words

Q6: PICTURE

Is there a picture included in the message? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the picture is directly linked to or shown in the message.

Q7: VIDEO

Is there a video included in the message? 1.No

2.Yes

Q8: EMOTICONS

Does the message includes emoticons? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message includes emoticon symbols like this one for example ☺☹

Q9: QUOTES

Does the message include quotes? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message includes direct quotes referred to by ‘...’ or directly quoted and referred to a person within the message. This includes messages, which are explicitly ascriba-ble to a person that belongs to the organization (Coach, players, General Manager, owner ect..) or to a person external to the organization but still in the NBA environment (coaches, General Managers, players, owners of other teams and journalists)

Q10: LINK

Does the message include a link for further information? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when there is a link shared to further information such as a statement video, a press release or a press article. Code no if this is not the case.

B2. Tone Q11: TONE

What is the overall tone attached to the frames employed by the Philadelphia 76ers and news media about tanking?

= Negative = Neutral = Positive

Tone can be defined as positive when the message contains these words or synonyms of these words: #TogetherWeBuild, #TrustTheProcess,#LetsGoSixers, #SixersWin, effort, future, fight, win and synonyms of these words.

Tone can be defined as neutral when the message contains just information about the result of the game or news about the team without any negative/positive value (e.g. “that’s all from Madison Square Garden and the result”, or that’s it from DC and the result”).

Tone can be defined as negative when the message attach a bad evaluation to the result of the game or to the actions of the management (e.g. “a lot of scrap in this squad and the result”, “Sam Hinkie should have been fired”, “tough loss”).

If a message contains a negative and a positive word, then the message can be coded as neu-tral. If the message contains one negative, one positive and one neutral word, then it can be coded as neutral.

Conflict Frame Q12: CF1

Does the message reflect disagreement between parties, individuals, groups or countries? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message explicitly refers to a disagreement or fight or when it quotes dif-ferent parties which statements are clearly in conflict.

Q13: CF2

Does one party, individual, group, country reproach another? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message explicitly refers to a reproach or when a quote states something similar to ‘this party has done … wrong’, so in short when one party blames another party.

Q14: CF3

Does the message refer to two sides or to more than two sides of the problem or issue? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message shows quotes from two different parties that refer to the same problem in a different matter.

Q15: CF4

Does the message refer to winners and losers? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message explicitly refers to a certain party doing better than another.

Human Interest Frame Q16: HIF1

Does the message provide a human example or “human face” on the issue? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message refers to a person or group of people in direct link to the issue, for example the GM Sam Hinkie, the Coach or the players.

Q17: HIF2

Does the message employ adjectives or personal vignettes that generate feelings of outrage, empathy-caring, sympathy, or compassion?

1.No 2.Yes

Code yes when the message explicitly uses adjectives and personal vignettes to emotionalize the audience, such as “#togetherwebuild”, “#trust”, “#believe”…

Q18: HIF3

Does the message emphasize how individuals and groups are affected by the issue/problem? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message for example refers to the fans or others stakeholders.

Q19: HIF4

Does the message go into the private or personal lives of the actors? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when private stories about management of the team, players or fans are shown in the message.

Q20: HIF5

Does the message contain visual information that might generate feelings of outrage, empa-thy, caring, sympaempa-thy, or compassion?

1.No 2.Yes

Code yes when the message includes a picture or video that might cause strong emotions with the public.

Economic Consequences Frame Q21: ECF1

Is there a mention of financial losses or gains now or in the future? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly mentions financial implications for the organization.

Q22: ECF2

Is there a mention of the costs/degree of expense involved? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly refers to the costs that the tanking has caused for both the organization, fans and other stakeholders.

Q23: ECF3

Is there a reference to economic consequences of pursuing or not pursuing a course of action? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message explicitly refers to the costs of a specific action that could be tak-en by the organization.

Morality Frame Q24: MF1

Does the message contain any moral message? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message refers to an action by the organization that is in line with what is expected from the public, in terms of common ethic.

Q25: MF2

Does the message make reference to morality, God, and other religious tenets? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly refers to right and wrong, god, or religious related specif-ics (it must be explicitly mentioned).

Q26: MF3

Does the message offer specific social prescriptions about how to behave? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message shows a reflection of how to behave in an expected way.

Responsibility Frame Q27: RF1

Does the message suggest that some level of management has the ability to alleviate the prob-lem?

1.No 2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly refers to the management as a party that could solve or reduce the problem and its effects.

Q28: RF2

Does the message suggest that some level of the management is responsible for the is-sue/problem?

1.No 2.Yes

Code yes when the management is directly or indirectly referred to as responsible for the situ-ation.

Q29: RF3

Does the message suggest solution(s) to the problem/issue? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly refers to solutions for the situation.

Q30: RF4

Does the message suggest that an individual or group of people in society is responsible for the situation?

1.No 2.Yes

Code yes when the message directly blames a group of people for the situation that is not or-ganizationally related.

Q31: RF5

Does the message suggest the problem requires urgent action? 1.No

2.Yes

Code yes when the message suggests an urgent action that has to be taken to solve the situa-tion, by the management, fans or stakeholders.