THE EFFECT OF INCREASING AWARENESS ABOUT THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON SPORT FANATICISM FOR SAUDI SOCCER FANS

Abstract

Background: In Saudi Arabia, sport fanaticism has become one of problems for the occurrence of riots and violence in competitive sports, particularly in soccer. Moreover, one of the main causes for sport fanaticism is media in general and social media in particular. This study tried to explore the issue, find solutions to reduce this problem, and develop an awareness of the good values for sports and focused on the effect of increasing awareness for soccer fans who use media platforms in their daily lives.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of increasing awareness about the use of social media on sports fanaticism of Saudi soccer fans.

Procedures: The participants were given three survey documents with coding numbers and without asking them their names: “Pretest, Posttest 1, and Posttest 2”. Participants complete the demographic information such as age, marital status, education level, and other types of identifiable information. These demographic information were optional for the participants which means that each participant has rights to not respond to these demographic questions. Moreover, the participants have completed the sport fanaticism survey which was presented to the participants as a single document written in Arabic, “Pretest”. This determined the initial sport fanaticism level. After that, the participants were given a lecture about the role of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube videos in influencing sports fanaticism in Saudi Arabia. Immediately after hearing the lecture the participants were asked to complete the sport fanaticism survey a second time, “Posttest 1”. As the final measure, two weeks after the lecture, the participants were asked to complete the sport fanaticism survey once more, “Posttest 2”.

Methods: The subjects were categorized into three groups based on their scores on the pretest-lecture survey. These groups represented High, Medium, and Low levels of sports fanaticism. Basic descriptive statistics used to describe the demographic information of the participants, independent variables and dependent variables. All of the research questions investigated used a series of repeated-measures analyses of variance, each used one of the independent variables (Fanaticism Level, Age, Education Level, or Marital Status) as a grouping variable. In each case the repeated variable was the three scores for sports fanaticism for each student. With post hoc tests, the repeated-measures ANOVAs can assess differences between groups, changes in sports fanaticism over time, the interaction between groups and time, and other necessary comparisons.

Results: The participants’ mean level of fanaticism on Posttest 1 was significantly lower compared to the Pretest. Mean scores on Posttest 2 were higher than on Posttest 1, but lower than scores on the Pretest. The change from Pretest to Posttest 1 was significant, change from Posttest 1 to Posttest 2 was significant, and change from Pretest to Posttest 2 was significant.

Conclusion: According to the findings, social media can be negative if used in increasing sport fanaticism, at the same time it can be positive if used in increasing awareness in use of social media correctly. Additionally, the positive effects of the awareness lecture about the use of social media on sport fanaticism could reduce sport fanaticism.