The use of Social Media as a Public Relations tool at Ethiopian Athletics Federation
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Date
2021-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Communication and its practices are changing through time, and the radical technological advancements have revolutionized its environment, and force so many practitioners to go online than the formerly offline modes and communication via mainstream media.
Currently done research have indicated that social media practices in developed countries and organized structures completely differ from the developing countries like Ethiopia. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to examine current social media practice, understand the perceived utility of social media in achieving organizational goals and investigate the barriers faced by the Ethiopian Athletics Federation's PR and communications department in the use of social media.
In this paper qualitative form of data collection were employed with the use of interviews. The open-ended questions were asked to purposively selected participants like PR personnel that are working in the PR and communications department of EAF, and few stakeholders. In the data presentation and analysis thematic analysis was used since this type of analysis has the ability to analyze the qualitative data in a better way than other techniques. The main findings from this research have revealed that social media platforms are used; particularly Facebook is given a due attention in the federation.
Therefore, since the interaction has been more from the organization to its ‘undefined’ stakeholders, and with few responses from the public. The researcher recommended that there should have been a need for more two-way interaction between the organizations and their publics, and there needs to be a social media strategy or standard guideline to properly administer all the possible platforms and evaluate their effectiveness in facilitating the communication between the two parties.
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social media