Finalising Dissertation Topic

Several weeks have passed and not a lot has changed in the topic area focus. To sum up three main ideas: Football, Reputation, PR form one title: The impact of Public Relation as reputation management on the football industry in England.

However, discussion in class recently made me think about further narrowing of the topic. Is it possible!? Few ideas made me rethink. Could Reputation Management be exchanged with only Reputation, or even further narrow to Racism in Football or another issue linked to reputation? Could Football Industry in England be narrowed down to Football Clubs in London or only one football club like Manchester United for example? Could it be even more concentrate on PR agencies and professionals' opinion on increasing practices at football clubs, like the idea at first place but just slightly changing the title?

All of it has made me think and rethink.. At the end writing the content and then adapting the title to it could be another solution. Nevertheless, a narrowed topic, whatever it might be is about to be written leaving the main idea at first place be as follows: The impact of Public Relations on the Football Industry in England.

Quantitative Research Overview

Quantitative research methods are another approach for an investigator to tackle his study. Learning how to work with SPSS and more specifically the importance of reaching to the point of utilising the computer system is the difficult part. There are few steps that must be maintained in order to so: defining hypothesis, understanding variables (nominal, ordinal or interval), choosing the right system in SPSS to analyse and finally analysing. It does seem easier than the Qualitative research methods, but there are some limitations in both approaches that need to be considered.

When using Qualitative RM, the analyse could be interpret in different ways. It depends on the perception, communication and understanding of the interviews that are conducted. While in Quantitative RM, the analyse could be interpret in only one way. It only depends on the researcher and how the information from the questionnaires are input into SPSS. The rest is all done by the computer system. Conclusion could be made from the statements provided that Qualitative is a time-consuming approach, however Quantitative is lacking of interpretation variations. In this case, the choice of which RM will be mostly suitable for the investigation depends only on the research emphasis. Nonetheless, mixed methods are also a possible solution.

In the next two weeks, there is an ERASMUS IP I will be attending, so a break of thoughts will be made. After which, the writing of the Dissertation Proposal is going to start with a possible title: "The impact of public relations as a reputation management on the football industry in England". However, this title might change in order to adapt the research towards a better solution of the problem, which is lack of PR practitioners in the football industry. Furthermore, additional blog entries will be written in order to justify the research approach plus discussion on the literature that is going to be used in proposal.

Qualitative Research Overview

Three weeks of Qualitative Research Methods have passed and different styles of exploratory theories have been learned: Content Analysis, In-depth Interviews, Focus Groups. On the last one, there has been a non-graded assessment, on which a primary research with main focus at University of Greenwich had to be conducted. Students have been asked about their expectations before coming to Bachelors or Masters Degree in the university. Convincingly, the research has been conducted and findings have been pointed out mainly towards positive sightseeing and professionalism. The last, has also been an issue where students have expected faster feedback on assignments and quicker reply to emails on projects and subjects' concerns. However, this primary research method gives an idea of what an exploratory method could bring to a study.

For my dissertation proposal I have chosen to use qualitative theory, which I hope will help me explore the need of PR practitioners in Football Associations. However, I do not neglect the moment when I will be learning about the Quantitative Research Methods, which will give me a more informative comparison between the two primary theories. Nevertheless, if my dissertation proposal is decided to shift its main topic of research towards confirming theories, facts or phenomenas, I will probably be choosing the Quantitative approach. Moreover, I am looking forward to learn more about the last theory method.

The Beginning

Being a master's student in public relations has its difficulties. Besides the projects for other subject, we need to conduct a primary research (quantitative or qualitative) in order to support a theory or build up a new one.

The first step is a decision about the topic of study. My main interest is Sport, more specifically football. I am planning to work in this sector so this would be an opportunity to break through. However, this is not enough. Reputation has always interested me, this is why I am studying PR. L'Etang (2009) in her book of Public Relations: Concept, Practice and Critique has written a lot about reputation and culture. Great, now I have to more areas of interest.
In the past decade, the interest and the use of social media has grown up drastically. Theory like the Six-part model of Cyber-Interactivity introduced in Ferber, Foltz and Pugliese (2007) has an interesting way of evaluating Facebook, Twitter and the rest of so called online word of mouth strategies in the PR industry.

To summarise, I have come to a point of Sport, Reputation, Culture and Social Media Interaction. The next step is to familiarise myself in-depth with the subjects areas, read more, think of methods that will help me provide with the primary research that I need and finally, write it down in a academic format as a research proposal.