The 27th SEA Games Myanmar 2013: a Facebook perspective

Abstract

Organisations are using social networking sites to promote themselves and communicate with their stakeholders. This new medium has also found its way in the promotion of sporting events. In this article, the social network site of the 27th SEA Games in Myanmar 2013 was examined to understand its role in communicating with spectators and fans of the sporting event. The activity on the official Facebook page of the event was analysed by examining the posts by the organisers and comments by members of the social network site. In addition, the analysis also examined the issues that were surfaced on the social network site. The findings show that organisers of sports events did not leverage on the medium to encourage participation from members. Activity on the social media peaked during the event but tapered off after the event.

Keywords:

• South East Asian Games
• social network site
• sports event
• national identity
• communications strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.