Date of Award

6-26-2026

Date Published

August 2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Mass Communications

Advisor(s)

Joon Soo Lim

Keywords

corporate social advocacy;legitimacy;public relations;reputation;sports communications;strategic communications

Subject Categories

Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) has become increasingly common in professional sport, yet most research has examined individual athlete activism or sport consumer brands rather than leagues and teams. This dissertation examined how two public-relations communication strategies – highlighting a collaborative decision-making approach and creating a strong explanatory link between an organization and an issue – impact perceived CSA legitimacy and organizational reputation, and how audience-level factors such as fan identification and pre-existing issue position condition those evaluations. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with a control group (N = 302) presented U.S. NFL fans with a fictitious league statement advocating for immigrants. The results demonstrate what CSA communication can and cannot accomplish on a polarizing issue. Messages highlighting collaborative framing increased pragmatic legitimacy but not moral legitimacy, and moral legitimacy was the dimension most strongly associated with organizational reputation. The strength of the explanatory link did not moderate the effect of decision-making style. Audience pre-existing issue positions were the strongest predictor of both legitimacy dimensions, while fan identification was the strongest predictor of reputation. The two operated additively rather than interactively, suggesting that fandom adds a positive reputational pull that partly offsets but does not interact with the negative association of issue disagreement.

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Open Access

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