Fan Activism

Crowned as the most beautiful game, the very existence of football remains politically charged regardless of many claiming otherwise. As every sport requires a hero and a villain, football fans have historically politicized football whether as resistance to oppression or reinforcing insidious ideologies. However, as football further evolves into a highly commercialized and globalized phenomenon with international broadcasting and sponsorships, social media empowers fans to engage in political activism, albeit sometimes in a passive manner. In this paper, I will discuss how social media has permitted fan activism through an already politicized platform of football, from relaying political narratives to inspiring organization, among devoted,

Depending on their level of said emotional investment or commitment, their devotion to their loved sports team becomes further ingrained in their identity; drawing on the research of Wann et al as well as Hu and Tang, MacIntosh et al claim “depending on a fan’s individual degree of affinity for a team…the team becomes a part of the fan’s social identity” (MacIntosh et al 317). As the fan becomes more engrossed with their subject, fans tend to seek out a community of likeminded individuals, a process made simplified by the presence of social media. Traditionally, football fans fixated on their local teams and were therefore connected geographically; football clubs reflected the local identity. For example, in the case of FC Barcelona, the Catalan giants once represented the Catalan people amidst brutal suppression under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. However, with current context consisting of globalization and commodification of the sport, football fans can now seek a community beyond geographic borders by virtue of social

Often regarded as acceptable nationalism regardless of the issues nationalism entails, the World Cup can either cultivate a sense of unity across the world or further exacerbate international tensions; Samuel-Azran et al deliberate on the former in the case of Israel and Iran in the 2014 World Cup tournament. With the two nations’ tense political relations, Samuel-Azran et al surveyed over five hundred Jewish-Israelis regarding their attitudes on the Iranian National Team. While the vast majority expressed animosity toward their rivals, Samuel-Azran et al in addition analyzed their attitudes through comments made on major social media networks. Although many comments were widely negative about the Iranian team, a few prominent Facebook pages surfaced promoting good relations between the two nations via football, particularly the Israel Loves Iran page with more than one hundred thousand likes as of November 2017. It should be noted their findings indicate troubling attitudes of the Iranian team, as “Iran was by far the team most Israelis rooted against (117 or 23%)” (Samuel-Azran et al 259), yet their research also shows the power of social media for fans for exhibiting support and desire to connect with the Iranian people, even though this is problematized by their counter-stereotypes and conditional support if Iranians show secular attitudes.