Comparing the Twitter posting of British gambling operators and gambling affiliates: a summative content analysis

ABSTRACT

The current study aimed to assess the type of content posted on Twitter by British gambling operators and gambling affiliates; third-party firms who are financially incentivized to attract custom to gambling operators. Five thousand and twenty-nine tweets from 5 gambling operators and 8315 tweets from 5 gambling affiliates were collected over a 2-week period. A summative content analysis was carried out whereby each tweet was coded for its main content. Tweets were grouped together into content categories and the percentage of tweets in each content category was calculated for both operators and affiliates. The nine categories of content found were: direct advertising, betting assistance, sports content, customer engagement, humour, update of current bet status, promotional content, safer gambling and ‘other’. Gambling operators had a higher proportion of posts in the sports content and humorous content categories, whilst affiliates had a higher proportion of posts within the direct advertising and betting assistance categories. These findings suggest that the affiliates were more direct in their posting style whereas operators followed a more indirect approach, reflective of a branding strategy. Future research should address how interacting with different types of gambling content on social media impacts upon gambling attitudes and behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Gambling
• social media
• marketing
• gambling affiliates
• advertising

Conflicts of interest

Competing interests

Scott Houghton receives funding from GambleAware to carry out his PhD studies, a company that may be affected by the research reported in this article. He has disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis, and he has in place an approved plan for managing any potential conflicts arising from that involvement.

Constraints on publishing

The authors declared no constraints on publishing.

Additional information

Funding

The study was carried out as a part of the first author’s PhD studies. The PhD is funded by GambleAware.

Notes on contributors

Scott Houghton

Scott Houghton is a GambleAware-funded PhD student studying at Northumbria University. His PhD studies are focussed upon the relationship between social media and gambling. More specifically, he is interested in furthering understanding on how social media is used in relation to gambling, the impact this has upon gambling attitudes and behaviours and whether social media can be used to effectively promote safer gambling.

Andrew McNeil

Andrew McNeil is a lecturer in psychology at Northumbria University. Previously he has worked on projects exploring the use of social media in transmission of information during pandemics, as well as the design of social network systems for older adults.

Mitchell Hogg

Mitchell Hogg is a multidisciplinary health researcher with a key interest in the development of complex psychosomatic interventions. He is due to begin a PhD project investigating the use of a novel breathing strategy to subdue mood-related symptoms and autonomic complaints within postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) patients.

Mark Moss

Mark Moss is head of the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the division and oversees staffing and budgeting for all programmes of study. He was a founding member of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience Unit (now the Brain Performance and Nutrition Research Centre) at Northumbria University. His main research interests relate to the modulation of cognitive function and mood through natural interventions, with a current focus on phyto-aromatics.