The role of social media governance in shaping users' motivations for interacting with influencers' sports advertising

Abstract

This study aimed to explain the role of social media governance in shaping users’ motivations for interacting with influencers’ sports advertisements. The research approach was qualitative and exploratory, interpretive, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 19 participants, including 12 active social media users and 7 experts and activists in the field of advertising and digital marketing in sports. Sampling was purposeful and with a maximum diversity approach, and data collection continued until theoretical saturation was reached. After the interviews were fully implemented, line-by-line coding was performed, and by combining similar codes, 77 basic themes were extracted and organized into 9 organizing themes and 3 overarching themes. The findings showed that social media governance affects engagement motivations through three main pathways: first, platform transparency and monitoring policies that strengthen or weaken perceptions of advertising legitimacy and trust in the influencer; second, the role of content display algorithms that can both increase engagement and create fatigue and pessimism by targeting, repeating, and cyclically reinforcing content; and third, user experience management that affects engagement quality by controlling advertising saturation and providing the ability to manage ad display. Also, trust and perceived credibility of sports advertising were identified as the intermediary link between platform governance and engagement motivations. Finally, user engagement motivations were formulated into three categories: informational, emotional, and social-identity. The results showed that the effectiveness of influencer sports advertising is significantly dependent on platform governance mechanisms in addition to influencer and content characteristics.