Examination of social media use of e-sports clubs in terms of corporate identity: Twitter example

Today, social media emerges as a social environment in which individuals, as well as institutions, are actively involved. It is crucial for institutions to exist on social media in order to update themselves according to the conditions of the time, create content production strategies and ensure that the brand image remains strong. Many factors such as the creation of corporate social media pages, identifying the contents according to the design strategies determined by the institution, being enough the frequency of sharing, and producing content for the behavior of the institution towards its employees, stakeholders, followers and other people reveal the necessity of institutions to have corporate identity elements in social media. Many factors such as the participation of e-sports clubs in national and international tournaments, the fact that they are among the carriers of the gaming industry, and the availability of employment opportunities have made e-sports have a unique place in the new world order. In order to reveal how and at what level e-sports clubs reflect the elements of corporate identity on social media, 34 clubs with Twitter accounts were selected, and 5432 tweets in addition to club pages were evaluated by the content analysis method. In this research, corporate philosophy, corporate design, corporate communication and corporate behavior elements on Twitter accounts of e-sports clubs were examined separately under the roof of corporate identity. In general, it has been concluded that e-sports clubs do not give enough space to corporate identity elements on Twitter.