SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT WITH AND WITHOUT MULTIMEDIA 1

Subject Engagement of Multimedia Elements in Sports-related Social Media Posts

Jonathan Barlas, Justin Bemos, Sam Black, Jimmy Freskos, Anthony Silva

Illinois State University

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Abstract

Our group study is based on the measure of the subject’s satisfaction and engagement of

different multimedia elements in sports-related tweets, based on factors in writing, overall

aesthetic and video/photo inclusion. We tested subjects with two primary based tweets. The first

tweet we showed our subjects had much detail into it. It contained an action picture of the player

in the game, was more colorful and descriptive, and also was more on the creative side of

writing. The second tweet appeared as dull, with just information on what happened during the

game. It lacked color and description to a certain degree. In conclusion, as a group we witnessed

that the more vivid tweet did in fact receive more of a positive feedback when compared to the

dull tweet. These results show that tweets that include multimedia elements during game time in

fact do receive a more positive reaction from viewers and garner more engagement on Twitter.
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Subject Engagement Probability in Sports-related Social Media Posts

The purpose of this study was to determine the difference in engagement between

multimedia elements and non-multimedia elements in tweets regarding sports-related content,

more specifically the Chicago Bears football team. The method of this study utilized purposive

sampling, which was conducted by having subjects take surveys on how they feel towards each

tweet presented to them. The study involved 100 total surveys which was split evenly for one of

the two social media posts created for both sets of surveys: (1) includes only a social media post

with content writing, and (2) includes five different multimedia elements: hashtags, account

attributions, emojis and a photo, along with writing to complement the post itself. The study that

was conducted used a Likert-type questionnaire, which contained sixteen questions that ranged

from strongly disagree (corresponding to one) to strongly agree (corresponding to five). The use

of the written survey that focused on responses of the social media post with multimedia

elements, indicated subjects’ attitudes and overall engagement with posts with multimedia

elements rather than non-multimedia posts.

Social media has inadvertently changed the landscape of how we connect with one

another. Able to draw the eyes of users all over the globe, it does not matter what topic is being

pushed through social media channels, the packaging is what matters most. Writing and design

elements draw users to engage with specific posts about anything on any social media platform.

News outlets, businesses and even sports teams’ (professional, minor league, collegiate etc.)

social media profiles thrive on the use of multimedia elements as well as an overall aesthetic to

please their audience while gaining more following in the process.

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It’s a numbers game: the more following a social media outlet has, the more often times it

will use multimedia aspects in posts to attract both new users and keep its current users (Bhatia,

2019). The success is seen on a large scale, but how well do social media outlets of professional

sports teams use multimedia to their advantage? Factors such as overall influence, engagement

rate, content-push (embedded with links to stories with more information) cause a social media

profile to garner the need to use more multimedia elements; in an effort to attract and keep a

powerful and unique aesthetic (Bhatia, 2019).

However, this is not the case for influential journalists and high-profile players as

quarterbacks of NFL teams (Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes etc.) have the same luxury, whereas

their influence is treated as celebrity type structure of engagement. An ambassador such as a

team’s quarterback in turn drives up engagement numbers to his team’s social media profile

because of his influence from his own personal engagement; regardless of his misuse of

multimedia elements (English, 2017). Stripping away status, using multimedia elements such as

videos, links, photos etc. in social media posts will better the audience’s attitude as well as

likeliness to engage with those posts, rather than not using multimedia elements. With

multimedia elements in posts, it has been proven that engagement within user retweets increases

by 150% (Widrich, 2013).

Literature Review

In March of 2001, Jack Dorsey and a few friends created Twitter, a social media website

that only allowed users to put out statements using 140 characters or less. What once started as a

small blog-like website, has now grown to have over 300 million users; with over 100 million
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users accessing the platform daily as it continues to become a hub for advertising and

promotions.

Nearly since its inception, corporate brands have used Twitter as a channel to advertise

and push their products. Research has been done on nearly every aspect of how to craft the

perfect branded tweets. As mentioned before, not only do retweets garner a 150% increase in

user engagement, but Twitter users are 18% more likely to click on a tweet with a photo, and

those with photos receive 89% more favorites than their counterparts (Widrich, 2013).

Furthermore, a study conducted by analyzing over two million tweets from thousands of verified

accounts found that the inclusion of photos, links, videos, and even hashtags can increase

engagement on an otherwise non-important tweet (Rogers).

The world of sports has evidently evolved over the course of the past two decades, and a

lot of this is due to social media and the ways that players interact with it. For example, athletes

of the past have never had to deal with social media like professional athletes do today because

social media did not exist in the 90s. In recent years, quarterback of the Buffalo Bills Josh Allen

posted racial slurs on his Twitter account that were dug up just moments before the 2018 NFL

Draft (Reyes, 2018). He immediately had to apologize to his new teammates moments after

being drafted 7th overall due to a post that he made as a child.

Nevertheless, what Josh Allen did was still in the wrong, but so many younger athletes

that come into professional sports today can be scrutinized by something they posted on social

media. Whereas athletes of the past did not have to deal with the affects positive or negative that

social media has on the sports world today. Social media is a way for players and teams to gain

more money, advertising, product purchasing, popularity etc., especially if they are not covered
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by the traditional media. (Watanabe, Pegoraro, Yan, Shapiro, 2019).This leads to sports like

volleyball in Europe that are not covered much having to take other nontraditional routes to get

their teams and players more popularity. It says that “Concerning television, coverage of

volleyball continually accounts for less than 2.5 percent of the whole sports coverage”

(International Communication Association, 2017, p. 5; Rühle, 2013). This means that players

must get creative in the ways that themselves can gain attention, because social media is free and

everybody can use it.

The Conference Papers International Communication Association found that most

players actually do not use social media to present themselves as volleyball players. These

athletes instead use it for their own social lives and keeping in touch with their friends and

family. Many of their postings were not related to volleyball at all on Facebook (51%), and

Instagram (60%). Most of these were dedicated to their private life; these athletes do not use

their social media as an alternative to sports journalism. Many of them, if they are using social

media to talk about their sport, are talking in a negative way that they are dissatisfied with the

lack of coverage by sports journalism.

Most of the players do not use multimedia posts as well (Instagram). In the survey, the

players made 1,172 Facebook posts, 406 Tweets, and only 223 Instagram posts. They concluded

that Facebook is the most popular platform by far in Germany and although people will post

photos to it, people will just post words only as well, unlike Instagram where it is only photos

one can post (International Communication Association, 2017).

In addition, timeliness is a huge factor when looking at Twitter posts related to sporting

events because engagement rates tend to fall off after the sporting action or event itself. This
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could affect the overall engagement garnered on social media for a specific post. For example,

During the Oklahoma v. Texas game Oct. 12, 2019, former Oklahoma quarterbacks Kyler

Murray and Baker Mayfield actively tweeted during the game. Both quarterbacks receiving over

ten thousand likes on each other's posts. An interesting factor to look at with these two examples

is how the tweets were written. Murray simply wrote, "This game should be over you…" (@K1

via Twitter; 1:16 p.m. 10/12/19), receiving over 10,000 likes and over 600 retweets. On the other

hand, Mayfield's tweet which had a little more emotion to it he wrote, "CEEDEEEEEEEEE!!!!",

in reference to Oklahma’s freshman wide receiver (@bakermayfield via Twitter; 2 p.m.,

10/12/19), receiving over 20,000 likes and over 2,000 retweets. Those two tweets still are able to

gain more retweets, likes etc., but its timeliness affected the overall engagement in both

quarterbacks posts’ lifespan corresponding with the written content (Watkins, Lewis, 2014).

On the other hand, social media posts without multimedia elements draw in a different

allure of engagement. So much as just one hashtag or link creates a space for users to engage

with each other, rather than with the content. This baseline engagement without multimedia

elements in posts demonstrates that although users draw value from participation in a discussion,

they are less inclined to desire interaction with other hashtag users, particularly those who

disagree with them. This suggests that Twitter hashtags provide an open forum that approaches

the participatory requirement of the public sphere, but the lack of back-and-forth engagement

suggests the medium is not ideal for the generation of deliberative public opinion (O’Hallarn,

2018). Hashtags are an integral part of Twitter’s ability to link conversations of strangers and

fans together, spreading to the point that one half of all mobile device users employ them in their

social media posts (O’Hallarn, 2018). Hashtags have been studied in sports, bringing forth
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subjects in fantasy sports, overall fandom and social media identity, finding that they help form

another ‘social’ identity among fans of teams. These social identities that users take on either

dictate their overall engagement on social media, as more dedication and effort a user puts forth

to his fandom, the more prone they are to be more active on the platform, in turn more prone to

engage with more meaningful content. (Larkin, 2016).

The independent variable of our experiment is simply the posts themselves, as they will

elicit a certain response by the audience in our study. The different levels of the independent

variable is divided into two posts: (1) includes only a social media post with content writing, and

(2) includes five different multimedia elements: hashtags, account attributions, emojis and a

photo, along with writing to complement the post itself. This will determine and set our course

of action when comparing two sets of posts, one with multimedia elements and one without. For

example we will make a number of crafted Twitter post sets; these sets will consist of two tweets

that are about the same topic but one will consist of written words, and the other will be a

multimedia post that is about the same topic but will include hashtags, pictures, videos, or links

to the original post. We will repeat this process once we have gathered enough data in our

audience responses as well as analyzing the likert-type scale of how our audience felt when

looking at the sets of posts. Would they be more inclined to engage with it?

Our dependent variable stems from that engagement, how satisfied the audience is with

our social media posts based on factors in: The general importance of the information, how the

post is packaged, the types of multimedia elements in the post and the account that is spreading

the message (Example: an influencer to establish credibility).​ ​The dependent variable will in turn

allow us to make assumptions of the data before we analyze and record the hard evidence taken
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT WITH AND WITHOUT MULTIMEDIA 9

from the survey. Engagement is also dependent on participants’ personal likes and dislikes,

which may or may not be inclined to even engage with sports-related posts. A small portion of

subjects did not own a Twitter account in the first place (21% of target demographic based on

100 total surveys given out).

RQ​: Do multimedia elements in tweets affect college students’ overall engagement on

the social media platform Twitter?

Methods

Participants

100 students from a large Midwestern University served as participants in this conducted

study. They were a convenience sample due to the limited time we had to conduct this study and

the number of participants we can reach. Questionnaires were handed out to each of our 100

randomly selected individuals at the large Midwestern University. Each member participating in

our study was informed that they must answer every question on the survey as honestly as

possible and could choose to discontinue answering the survey at any time. The participants were

also notified that their answers on the survey are completely anonymous.

Instrument

The study we conducted used a Likert-type questionnaire, which contained sixteen

questions that ranged from strongly disagree (corresponding to one) to strongly agree

(corresponding to five). To determine the engagement of participants between our multimedia

tweet and our non-multimedia tweet, we first disregarded all participants who said they do not

use the social media platform Twitter. Next, we decided what subjects sided with the multimedia
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tweet by analyzing their answers regarding how likely they were to engage with multimedia

tweets versus non-multimedia tweets.

The survey also asked questions about participant’s demographic information, such as

gender and education level (specified to year in college: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, or

graduate student).

Procedure

Subjects were given a short introduction and instructions before reading of the survey.

Students were then handed a Likert-type scale at a large Midwestern University. After the

subjects were handed the survey they then were asked to answer all questions as honestly as

possible knowing that each answer will be anonymous. Subjects were also informed that they

can back out of the survey at any time they feel too. Students were then given ten minutes to

complete the questionnaire and then were asked to raise their hand upon completion of the

survey so researchers could collect their results. After all participants completed the survey they

were then debriefed about the study, and were again told that their answers will remain

anonymous.

Results

The engagement was measured to see if college students are more likely to engage with

multimedia tweets than non-multimedia tweets and was tested for reliability. Results showed that

the scale used for this study had a reliability score of .949. Which is an outstanding reliability

score. The data collected was entered into the SPSS data system. Significance levels were set at a

0.5.
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First, there were two groups for our data set, students who received the multimedia

survey and the non-multimedia survey. These groups were separated to see if there was a

statistically significant difference between their likeliness to engage with a multimedia tweet

compared to a non-multimedia tweet.

An independent samples t-test was used to see the difference between the group’s

likeliness to engage with a multimedia tweet as opposed to a non-multimedia tweet. The two

tailed significance test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the

two groups (M = 35.823, SD = 13.078).

Discussion

The study our group conducted tested for significant differences between the two groups: one

with the multimedia tweet and the other group with the non-multimedia tweet. The research

question asked if college students are more likely to engage with multimedia tweets compared to

non-multimedia tweets. Our independent t-test sample showed that college students are more

likely to engage with multimedia tweets since the two tailed significance test was above .05. The

results showed that college students are more likely to engage with multimedia tweets. The data

the researchers gathered supported our research question. Showing us that the multimedia tweet

does really stand out more than the non-multimedia tweet.

Limitations

The main limitation of this study was that it used a convenience sample. The main issue

of this was that using a convenience sample does not give you participants who are the best

representatives of the population. This could have been a threat to external validity, as

participants could have altered the results of the study. The sample could have poorly
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represented our target population of college age twitter users. Our sample size only included 79

people due to omissions from participants not being Twitter users. 79 people was not enough to

generalize the population at a large Midwestern university. The thing the researchers could have

done differently is used purposive sampling. This is sampling where researchers actually pick the

participants so they might be more representative of the population. Instead of sampling students

that were found in a library, they could have instead went to a large class of their choosing to

give the survey to.

Furthermore, since we used a convenience sample that could have had an impact on the

results since students at the library are less likely to be engaged with Twitter. Also, some of the

students participating could have known what the researchers were trying to find and altered

their results from their honest answers before returning it to the researchers. These limitations

affect the ability to generalize the findings to the student population of the university, or

potentially a larger population, like all Twitter users.

Another limitation of this study was how brief the survey was. Only 16 questions were

used to ensure the researchers were solely testing engagement, but more could have been added

to strengthen the correlation between the variables. Many students also did not understand the

term “engage” on the survey and could potentially get confused and answer differently than how

they truly feel. The researchers could have definitely defined the term “engage” more as it was a

pivotal term that was used to define how people interacted with the tweet. They also could have

added more questions to make the correlation stronger.

There are some threats to both internal and external validity. First, the first threat to

internal validity is history, meaning that results may have been impacted between observations
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because of outside events.. This study evaded threats to internal validity via history by

distributing and collecting the data in a short amount of time. It would have been better if the

researchers decided to go to a class and give students fifteen minutes to complete the survey.

However, many people finished their rather quickly in the library so that might have affected the

results of the study. Content maturation as a threat to internal validity was not relevant to this

study for the same reason. Selection as a threat to internal validity was likely in this study, due to

convenience sampling and reasons already discussed. This is something that is hard to deal with

for sports teams because they are always getting better or worse and people’s opinions on teams

and players always change. Maybe the better thing to do might have been used a team that

people have very little opinions of as an example of the tweets. This would remove the bias that

students have of the team and how much they would engage with the tweet.

Since the sample was a convenience sample of 79 people, all students in the library,

selection could have impacted the data set. The final threat to internal validity is mortality. No

participants dropped out or died during their taking of the surveys, and is not applicable to this

study.

A possible external threat to validity was the participant’s feelings on the account the

researchers used to display the multimedia and non-multimedia tweets. The researchers used the

Chicago Bears, an NFL team. This could have been problematic as participants could have not

been Bears fans, or could have been less likely to share the posts in our survey because the Bears

had just lost their game the night before the survey took place on Nov. 18, 2019. The Bears had

also lost four of their past five games, so participants could have been less likely to share the

posts due to their bad record at that point in time

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Implications

This study has contributed to all prior research conducted on social media and the use of

multimedia elements increasing the individual's likeliness to engage with that piece of content.

As stated before, if you take away the status of the account, using multimedia elements such as

videos, links, photos, etc. in social media posts will better the audience’s attitude as well as

likeliness to engage with those posts, rather than not using multimedia elements. With

multimedia elements in posts, it has been proven that engagement within user retweets increases

by 150% (Widrich, 2013).

Due to the prevalence of social media in our lives today, it is noteworthy to look at how

people interact and engage with it on day by day basis or even second by second basis. Social

media is becoming a part of our everyday lives. Every year social media usage goes up amongst

Americans. According to statista.com, 79% of the United States population utilizes social media.

Which is an enormous amount of the population, and that's just counting the United States

(Statista.com, 2019). Coincidentally, this number perfectly reflects how many people out of 100

had Twitter during our study. So researching what sort of posts attract the most engagement

(posts using multimedia) is vital for advertisers that are trying to connect with possible

consumers. For instance while there are hundreds of different marketing strategies, only one can

bring in consistent sales from day one: social media advertising (Tam, 2019). Social media

advertising, or social media targeting, are advertisements served to users on social media

platforms. Social networks utilize user information to serve highly relevant ads based on

interactions within a specific platform. In many instances, when the target market aligns with the
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT WITH AND WITHOUT MULTIMEDIA 15

user demographics of a social platform, social advertising can provide huge increases in

conversions and sales with a lower cost of acquisition (Tam, 2019).

To conclude, our study showed us that tweets consisting of multimedia elements were

more likely to be engaged with than its inverse tweets that did not include aspects of multimedia

content. From the data, it showed that almost all the responses favored higher engagement results

for tweets that used multimedia except for two of our questions on our survey. Oddly enough, the

only items that didn’t correspond with the majority of our research findings were two of our

survey questions. The first one being, “I would follow this account because of this tweet?” and

the second question, “I would click on this account based on this tweet?” also saw the

non-multimedia tweet receive higher engagement responses than the multimedia tweet we

created for our survey. The researchers found this response data to be insignificant in our

findings because it was in the minority of what a majority of our data was telling us. One

possible reason for those particular results could be that more loyal Bears fans took the survey

with the non-multimedia tweet and would be intrigued in the tweet regardless because they are

Bears fans. Therefore, they would be willing to follow the account or click on the tweet despite if

it had multimedia elements or not. This survey was also conducted in a limited timeframe. So

maybe if there was a larger sample size for research, those questions may have had different

results to them. Additionally, the results favoring more engagement with the tweets that were

non-multimedia weren’t significant enough to be noteworthy to contradict the results for the

other questions on our survey.

Now reasons for social media posts containing multimedia elements having a higher

engagement rate than posts with non-multimedia features could be due to multimedia posts
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having a more aesthetic appeal to them. For example, a multimedia post could have pictures,

links (multiple sources), writing, hashtags, etc.. In contrast, a non multimedia post that just has

written text can come off a little bland or uninspiring.

Future Research

Continuing this research in this study can help analyze multiple sports data between fans

and athletes. Knowing that the information we received from our study outwardly shows that

there's more engagement when viewing multimedia tweets rather than viewing the

non-multimedia tweets. This research can also be extended to analyze how social media plays a

huge part in the sports world. When analyzing the human engagement within the games they are

viewing. This data can also be used to filter positive and negative feedback from fans towards

players. Showing that if an athlete performs poorly during their designated game that athlete in

the media will be portrayed more negatively than getting a more positive review. Finding that the

overall performance of the athlete pertains to his likeness by fans. Without this research, the

fans’ and athletes’ relationship amongst each other would be even more divided than it is now.

The opinions of fans are what athletes strive for. They try to win over their fans by performing to

the best of their abilities during game time; giving the athlete a chance to control their own

feedback. Another reason why this study should be further dissected is to help the players’

market value as well as their personal brand. The media and fans are what control the athletes’

popularity level amongst each other. Giving the athletes a sense that their own game ability is

acceptable or not to the viewers. Therefore, this research can decide if the player is worth the

time and money to market; also coinciding with general market analytics as well, pertaining to

entities outside of athletes and the sporting world. Analysts can use this information to promote
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the athlete that is on “fire,” making more money for everyone and the brand backing it. This

marketability across the different spectrums social media reaches (i.e. sports, news, restaurant

promotions, general advertising etc.) better connects the fans to the athletes, and the athletes to

the investors. Another way this research can be beneficial is it shows the engagement of fans

with the networks they are viewing their desired sports games on. Networks like Fox, CBS, and

many other networks can look at the social media output by viewers/fans and analyze how many

fans enjoy watching their favorite sports teams on their T.V. networks. This can give big

networks like Fox an understanding of much interaction is going on throughout the game. Giving

these networks a base number of how many viewers actually watch the game. This also could

have an effect on politics in the media. Politicians can study the things that the researchers have

looked at, and although the study was pertaining to sports, it could be applied to other areas as

well. The thing that politicians would be looking for is getting people more engaged with them

on social media which is a big driving force in elections during this era of the internet. Also all

companies in general trying to promote their brand could use this study as well. Sports teams are

just like any other company trying to promote their product. The better the product is the more

reaction it will receive.This study applies to them as well. Seeing what people engage with on

Twitter is great for marketing and a big tool for every company today because so many people

use it. The internet and social media is a tool that nearly everyone uses to gain more exposure

and feedback about themselves and their products.

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