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The Fan Principle: Fans and Fan Customers
Abstract
In this chapter we explain, based on the relevant social science literature, who or what a fan is in the first place and which characteristics and behaviors are typical of fans. We determine why every fan relationship is based on identification and is experienced as unique by the fan. We show that every company can have fans and develop a lean measurement tool that identifies such Fan Customers. Fan Customers, we prove, are highly satisfied and emotionally loyal customers, and we show that our Fan Portfolio makes it possible to segment the universe of customers into five groups ranging from Fans to Opponents. We prove that the Fan Rate, i.e., the percentage of fans among all customers of a company, is the much more valid metric for managing a company than customer satisfaction. At the end, we look at the Fan Rates of different industries in different countries.
This paper looks at the role of euphemisms in various aspects of communication, especially in corporate settings. It explores how euphemisms function as linguistic tools to shape perceptions, mitigate negative information, and sway social interactions. The analysis incorporates the use of euphemisms in communication related to decision-making, their impact on stakeholders, ethical considerations surrounding their use, and their broader implications for corporate communication and societal norms. The text highlights the connection between language, perception, and ethics. It urges for a better understanding of the consequences of euphemistic language in organizational discourse.
This study examines how the fandom of pop star Taylor Swift negotiates her ‘political’ awakening, after politically coming-out via Instagram in 2018. When Swift announced her vote for two Democratic senators, (international) media and her fandom considered it controversial. Swift, unlike many other pop-singers, had never publicly expressed her political views, until 2018. Yet, doing so put her on the map as a potential celebrity politician (CP): a celebrity who is fighting for a particular interest or certain political outcome, while holding a certain political influence over an audience. By scrutinizing how her fandom, the “Swifties,” deal with their idol’s political revelations, this study offers a granular insight into the intersection between celebrity, fandom, and political culture. Drawing on a content analysis of fan-interviews and online comments, this study illustrates how fans negotiate Swift’s transition from popstar to CP. It demonstrates how fans consider Swift’s political coming-out: On the one hand, they think it is a potential career-strategy of Swift, to lift her persona from singer to strategic “business” woman. On the other hand, the fans consider it a “must” for pop stars in today’s political climate to express where they stand politically. This discussion highlights that the how of Swift’s message, and not just the what or why, are of importance in understanding her position as a CP. Therewith, this study illustrates how fans make sense of today’s politics through the celebrity persona—potentially putting an even greater burden on the shoulders of today’s stars.
In this article, we suggest that our semiotic understanding of embodiment could be expanded to include a socially exalted individual, who embodies a symbol. To illustrate this argument, we draw on an ongoing research project that examines fandom rhetoric and debates around the ‘Greatest of all time’ or the GOAT symbol in Tennis. Grounding Bakhtin’s tri-distinctions of identity, I-for-myself, I-for-other and other-for-me, in a Kantian hermeneutic tradition, we perform a theoretically informed analysis of the GOAT debate. None of the three tri-components exists in isolation; rather, they interact in a reflexive dialogue which continually shapes and re-shapes individual consciousness and experiences of embodiment. We apply a ‘romanticism aesthetic activity’ analytical framework to the tri-distinctions of identity, that consists of ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ rhetoric, within which we found genres of ‘myth’, ‘art’ and ‘science’. Each genre functions through disparate means to exalt or metamorphise an individual (our focus is on Roger Federer) into a cultural symbol, and that the symbolic form of GOAT reflexively organises the emotional field and identities for those fans deeply invested in it. This article contributes to the current cultural psychological literature on understanding the mediation of people to symbols in a new digital age.
The controversy about the campaign to boycott Israel in general and Israeli sports in particular suffers from the absence of empirical data about the political character of the Israeli sports sphere, as well as the way Jewish Israelis see a possible boycott. Supporters of the boycott hope, among other things, that the campaign is registered among Israelis, and maybe even contribute to political change. Liberal opposition relies on the argument that sports is a beacon of inter-ethnic tolerance that should be cherished rather than targeted. Through a survey with a representative sample of internet users among the adult Jewish citizens of Israel (N = 600), this study provides the following related observations: (1) there is no evidence that Jewish Israeli sports fans are more likely to question the regime of Jewish supremacy than non-fans. (2) Among Jewish Israelis there is a small, but non-negligible minority who justifies the boycott of Israeli sports, and this minority is even larger among people who attend the soccer stadium and/or are politically active. (3) A significant majority of Jewish Israelis (69%) are concerned about a possible boycott of Israel in general, but this majority is less clear among men who are sports fans. The findings question the liberal expectation that Israeli sports serve as a model for inclusive citizenship and at the same time they indicate the potential of sports to amplify existing political tendencies among fans. These observations should be considered in future debates about sanctions and boycotts.
As K-pop industry has been expanded internationally, the strength of the K-pop fan community is under the spotlight. K-pop fans (or a fandom as a community) seek to support their band, and one of their strategies is ‘fandom collaboration’ where different fandoms for different bands mutually support to each other for the success of their bands. This paper investigates the current practice of fandom collaboration in K-pop. We first propose the notion of the ‘fandom collaboration network’ that represents the collaborations between K-pop fandoms. By collecting and analyzing a large-scale fandom activity data, we find that fandom collaboration tends to be reciprocal. We also identify a small number of fandoms who play significant roles in fandom collaboration in K-pop, and show that they are likely to (i) show active community engagement, (ii) be boy bands, (iii) be listed in the top music charts, and (iv) has been active for 3–5 years. Our analysis reveals that the prominent K-pop events such as new album releases, annual music awards, audition shows are associated with active fandom collaboration.
The past 25 years have seen an unprecedented Europeanisation of the structures and governance in football across the continent. A European (and global) transfer market for players and managers has become the norm and a pan-European league system has been established that regularly exposes supporters to transnational competitions and players from all over Europe. At the same time, manifold typologies of football fans have been established, distinguishing groups of fans based on, for example, fan intensity, fan behaviour or their attitudes towards different actors in the field. The attitudes towards Europe and the self-identification of these fans within Europeanised football have not played a role in any of these typologies so far. This paper steps into that void and develops a typology of football fans in (Western) Europe that takes their attitudes towards Europeanisation as a point of departure. Based on data from an online survey among fans of first league clubs in England, France, Austria and Germany, two dimensions are identified as key categories: the intensity of fandom, and fans’ attitudes towards Europeanisation – which here manifests as a divide between the national/local belonging versus appreciating diversity and transnational spaces/developments or more succinctly, a divide between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Our analysis uncovers the existence of four types of fans: occasional cosmopolitans, occasional communitarians, frequent cosmopolitans and frequent communitarians.
The article introduces the concept of periphery fandom, a concept that is new in the debate on consumer culture, to interrogate global fan community productive experiences from various geographical locations. Periphery fandom is defined as a sub-ordinated fan community experience, where members are deprived of access to their objects of fandom. Periphery fandom also refers to a fan productive experience that is detrimental to the fan community ethos. This notion of periphery fandom is underpinned by insights from fandom studies, brand community scholarship, and core and periphery theories. Using adult fans of LEGO as an example, this article demonstrates the character of periphery fandom. By contrasting the data gathered from 2014 to 2019 during UK, Japan, USA, and Brazil LEGO fan events, this study reveals how fans’ divergent productive practices and community experiences are influenced by their geographical location. Moreover, the fan productive experiences from the periphery further hinder their creative expressions and visibility, creating a more fragmented global brand fandom landscape. This study overall advances a contribution to the fandom debates by contrasting fan production and fan brand experiences.
This article examines how spaces of fandom in the English Premier League (EPL) have developed over the last decade in light of globalization processes and technological advancements. This conceptual paper thus utilizes the existing literature and frames these insights to outline emerging ‘offline’ and ‘online’ spaces of fandom in the English football’s top-tier. It is argued that these under-explored spaces have been enacted by broader, powerful processes and the two spaces – the fan zone (‘offline’ space) and the independent Fan TV (‘online’) do now comprise two important spaces that add vibrancy, meaning and socio-cultural elements to the practice of ‘being’ a fan. Crucially, the article ties into and extend current debates around the technology-fandom pair. It sustains that, in order to understand contemporary fan culture in the EPL, these spaces must, increasingly, be considered as sites for collective and individual identification, the performance of fandom and social interaction.
This paper explores how the corporate (re)naming of football stadia and their urban environs is negotiated through fans’ toponymic discourses and associated commemoration. Critical toponymy research emphasises oppositional toponymic tensions between sovereign authorities and citizens, which can result in competing inscriptions of space. Adopting a quasi-ethnographic approach, we reveal a more complex picture by exploring the variegated toponymic discourses of football fans. The findings demonstrate intricate entanglements in how fans reluctantly accept a corporate stadium name, yet also actively resist it through counter-performative utterances, often imbued with commemorative intent. Alternatively, fans passively ignore a corporate stadium name, using a former toponym in quotidian and habitual speech. We conclude by considering the implications of these findings for the influence of corporate power in urban toponymic inscription.
This study uses Herbert Blumer’s theory of collective behaviour and stages of the collective social definition of the problem to analyse print media discourse concerning domestic politics-related fan activity among Polish football fans prior to the Euro 2012 football championships finals. We describe and explain each stage of the escalating conflict, the wave of football fan protests, political reactions, and the measures undertaken to resolve the problem. A qualitative textual content analysis of media discourse was applied to 68 press articles that were published in the first half of 2011 in Przegląd Sportowy, the oldest sport newspaper in Poland. The results lead to the conclusion that all five stages of the process were clear-cut during the analysed period of political tension between the fans and the government, and that Blumer’s concept proves to be a viable means of analysing social problems related to contemporary sport fandom.
Using data from the National Sports and Society Survey ( N = 3,988), this study analyzes associations between gender, sexual, and sports fan identities. The authors find that only 11% of U.S. adults do not identify as sports fans at all; also, nearly half of U.S. adults identify as quite passionate sports fans. Women and nonbinary adults are less likely to identify as strong sports fans compared with men. Compared with identifying as heterosexual, identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or another sexual identity is negatively associated with self-identified sports fandom. Yet, gender and sexuality interact such that identifying as gay (or lesbian) is negatively associated with men’s self-identified sports fandom but not women’s fandom. These findings persist even after consideration of adults’ retrospective accounts of their sports-related identities while growing up and their recognition of sports-related mistreatment.
This article explores the relationship between gender, space and performances of fandom by female match-going fans of the Australian rugby league team the St George Illawarra Dragons. Drawing on a case study that utilised participant observation, semi-structured interviews and a focus group, this article develops a fan typology that details four different types of female fans of rugby league. The findings suggest some female fans were under levels of stricter gatekeeping by male fans depending on their spatial location inside of the stadium. Their inclusion into match-day culture was, therefore, shown to have limits. On the one hand, female match-going fans have agency and choice in the construction and interchange of a fan identity, but on the other, that same identity attests to oppression. We conclude that traditional match-day engagement with rugby league requires conformity to a predominantly masculine ideal.
Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2020.1809380.
Music is a universal phenomenon that has existed in every known culture around the world. It plays a prominent role in society by shaping sociocultural interactions between groups and individuals, and by influencing their emotional and intellectual life. Here, we provide evidence for a new theory on musical preferences. Across three studies we show that people prefer the music of artists who have publicly observable personalities ("personas") similar to their own personality traits (the "self-congruity effect of music"). Study 1 (N = 6,279) and Study 2 (N = 75,296) show that the public personality of artists correlates with the personality of their listeners. Study 3 (N = 4,995) builds on this by showing that the fit between the personality of the listener and the artist predicts musical preferences incremental to the fit for gender, age, and even the audio features of music. Our findings are largely consistent across two methodological approaches to operationalizing an artist's public personality: (a) the public personality as reported by the artist's fans, and (b) the public personality as predicted by machine learning on the basis of the artist's lyrics. We discuss the importance of the self-congruity effect of music in the context of group-level process theories and adaptionist accounts of music. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Nationalistic notions are embedded within every part of the Olympic Games, inculcating feelings pertaining to one’s nation. Previous research examined the degree to which one is affected by portrayals of nationalism during international sporting events, finding that media consumption and results increase nationalistic feelings. However, such analyses rarely infused overarching fandom into the equation and failed to make global comparisons. This study surveyed 2,245 people from three continents in six different nations (Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States) to examine nationalistic attitudes during the 2018 Winter Olympics and subsequent effects. Significant differences between nationalized qualities manifested between each continent, as did their paths to becoming a fan and consuming content.
This paper examines how a social threat posed by a deviant behavior affects second-hand forgiveness over time toward ingroup and outgroup transgressors. In Study 1, using real news reports, we investigated intergroup rivalries between soccer fans in order to understand the role of group membership in predicting the intention to forgive transgressors. Results suggested that transgressors were less likely to be forgiven by ingroup members rather than outgroup members, thus showing evidence of the black sheep effect. In Study 2 (using a different sample), we analyzed the same intergroup rivalries one year after the transgression in order to explore changes in intention to forgive over time. Results showed that, after one year, ingroup members were more likely to forgive ingroup than outgroup transgressors, but only when the threat to the group stereotype was not salient. The implications of the results for the subjective group dynamics theory and for the black sheep effect are discussed.
The team identification–social psychological health model predicts that sport team identification leads to social connections which, in turn, result in well-being. This pattern of effects was tested in a sample of 380 college students completing measures of sport fandom, identification with their university’s men’s basketball team, sense of belonging, and meaning in life. Mediation analyses and structural equation modeling indicated that, as expected, belonging mediated the relationship between identification and meaning in life. In addition, belonging also mediated the relationship between fandom and meaning in life. Discussion includes the importance of the well-being consequences of social ties gained through sport fandom, including connections that are more casual in nature.
Emotionen sind ein konstitutives, vielleicht das konstitutive Charakteristikum von Fans – und entsprechend lohnend ist es, sich aus emotionssoziologischer Perspektive mit Fans zu befassen. Der Beitrag legt dar, welche emotions soziologischen Blickwinkel bereits für die Analyse von Fans genutzt wurden und welche dahingehend künftig fruchtbar sein könnten. Dazu werden zunächst die Grundperspektiven der Emotionssoziologie skizziert – die Emotionen als Ergebnis sozialer Interaktionen und Strukturen verstehen, deren kulturelle Kodierung untersuchen oder ihre soziale Konstruiertheit betonen – und anschließend auf Fans bezogen.
Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwiefern die Wahl von Fanobjekten eine sozialstrukturelle Basis hat. Als Fanobjekte werden Personen verstanden, die außerhalb des persönlichen Netzwerks stehen und in Form von parasozialen Beziehungen verehrt werden. Anhand empirischer Studien wird aufgezeigt, dass Fans und Fanobjekte oft denselben Ungleichheitskategorien, etwa Geschlecht, Alter und Ethnie, angehören (kategoriales Matching) und gemeinsame Bezüge in der Differenzierungsstruktur aufweisen (systemisches Matching). Zur Erklärung dieser Homophilie wird die Lebensführung als Vermittlungsinstanz herangezogen, da sie als Rekrutierungsfeld für die verehrten Objekte fungiert. Das Ausmaß der Objektverehrung wird aus einer Fankapitalperspektive erklärt.
Der Beitrag bietet einen Überblick über Studien zu Fangewalt entlang analytischer Dimensionen, die sowohl das Phänomen der Gewalt in seiner Komplexität als auch den Eigensinn des Fanseins zu fassen versuchen. Er schlägt zudem eine Typologie von Formen der Gewaltausübung vor, die unterschieden werden nach ihrem Bezug auf die Fan-Fanobjekt-Figurationen. Diese Typologie wird in zwei Richtungen angewandt: in die Tiefe einer ausgewählten (Fußball)Fanszene und in die Breite der verschiedenen Fantümer mittels einer Kategorisierung von Fanszenen im Hinblick auf den unterschiedlichen Stellenwert von Gewalt. Den Aufsatz beschließt ein zusammenfassender Ausblick auf weiterführende Forschungsperspektiven.
Pledging lifelong loyalty to an ingroup can have far-reaching behavioural effects, ranging from ordinary acts of ingroup kindness to extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice. What motivates this important form of group commitment? Here, we propose one especially potent answer to this question-the experience of a visceral sense of oneness with a group (i.e., identity fusion). In a sample of British football fans, a population in which high levels of lifelong loyalty are thought to be common, we first examined the hypothesised relationship between fusion and perceptions of lifelong loyalty to one's club. We further explored the hypothesis that fusion and lifelong loyalty are not merely a reflection of past time investment in a group, but also reflect a deeper, memory-based process of feeling personally shaped by key group events, both euphoric and dysphoric. We found broad support for these hypotheses. Results suggest that feeling personally self-shaped by club events (e.g., crucial wins and losses), rather than time invested in the club, leads to greater identity fusion to one's club. In turn, fusion engenders a sense of lifelong club loyalty. We discuss our findings in relation to the growing literature on the experiential origins of intense social cohesion.
This study utilizes social identity theory to explore fan responses to the NFL teams’ racial advocacy on Twitter at the start of the 2020 football season. A content analysis of 2,868 direct replies and their corresponding user profiles was conducted. Findings supported SIT’s propositions about in-group bias, with commenters being more supportive and less critical of the activist messaging from the official accounts of teams for whom they express fandom. In contrast to expectations, out-group fans were also more supportive, while non-expressive users were the most active and critical of activist messaging. A post-hoc analysis, subsequently, revealed support for the hierarchy of social identity postulate, with in-group fans with conservative political orientation being most likely to renounce their fandom for NFL teams. Collectively, this study speaks to the resistance toward racial advocacy in sport but also frames fan expression and identity as a means of understanding patterns within these conversations.
This article is concerned with an emerging trend in political participation: the role played by football fans in engendering activism and protest. The role of fan activism in the debate on patterns of civic and political (dis)engagement – in the age of so-called anti-politics – has been ignored by the scholarly literature thus far. As a corrective, this article examines the development of football fan activism over the last thirty years, since the creation of the English Premier League in 1992. It adopts a case study approach centred on supporters’ movements since 1992. It argues that the political activism of football fans has both quantitatively and qualitatively changed over this period. Employing the sociological theory of Manuel Castells it claims that collective identities developed in resistance to the commercialisation and commodification within football have developed into more distinct ‘project identities’ that seek bring about more profound social change through football.
Sociological studies on the manifestations and reproduction of inequality through cultural consumption have focused on few domains of culture and have mostly neglected intensity in consumption. Using large-scale survey data about professional sports following in Canada, we investigate how socioeconomic position is associated with intensity of professional sports following ("voraciousness"). Our multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that social class, gender, and geography are predictors of voraciousness in each of the major professional sports leagues. Our latent class analysis (LCA) reveals seven sports following profiles marked by differences in range and intensity of following. We find that the most voracious sport followers are also the most omnivorous but are not distinctively the most privileged group. Findings suggest a distinct sport following profile of the predominantly male and economically dominant group in the field of social classes and point toward groups of sport followers with different styles of aversion and passing knowledge, perhaps in a type of deployment of Bourdieu's (1984) disinterested aesthetic. Overall, however, gender and region appear to be stronger predictors of voraciousness in sports following than social class in the Canadian context.
In this study, using data from the National Sports and Society Survey (N = 2853), we examine U.S. women’s reports of their sport consumption and self-identified sport fandom. Multiple regression analyses are used to assess associations between social structural and sociocultural antecedents of consumption and women’s frequencies of watching and following sport, frequencies of attending live sport events, and the amount of money that they spend to watch and follow sport. We then investigate the relationships between women’s sport consumption behaviors and their fandom. We find that women are common consumers of sport and their consumption is positively associated with their socioeconomic statuses, number of children, social relationships, sport participation experiences, and sport-related identities. We also find evidence that women’s sport consumption behaviors are only modestly associated with their levels of fandom. We conclude with reflections on what these results mean for better understanding and supporting women’s sport consumption and fandom.
How do different forms of group alignment influence our attitudes toward outgroups? To answer this, the current fieldwork study explored how identification and identity fusion differentially impact outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility toward rival football fan supporter groups in Australia. The community participants (N = 100) were members of two active fan groups who had experienced a history of intergroup tensions. The findings from the full path model confirmed that the predictor group alignment variables of identification and fusion were correlated, and the two outcome variables of outgroup prejudice and hostility were correlated, as predicted. The findings also revealed that fusion with one's club predicted outgroup hostility, but not prejudice, whereas identification with one's club predicted outgroup prejudice, but not hostility. Additionally, outgroup anxiety was found to significantly mediate the relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup prejudice, whereas a similar relationship was not found for fusion. These findings highlight the differential impact of group alignment (i.e., identification and identity fusion) on social constructs of outgroup anxiety, prejudice, and hostility. Empirically, this is the first study to demonstrate the workings of these distinct group alignment pathways in an applied setting involving hard‐core football fans. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for a fuller understanding of the drivers of intergroup tensions and conflict.
The dehumanization of professional athletes by sports fans has become a talking point for mainstream media, and fantasy sports participation is in the crosshairs. The social competition and romanticized ownership of the game spur strategy where participants theoretically utilize professional athletes in a mechanistic fashion, and as a result, may dehumanize them in the process. Previous work studying dehumanization in gaming has found outcomes related to moral disengagement and isolation. Recent research, however, found fantasy football participants actually humanize their own fantasy athletes over non-fantasy athletes. The current study looked to confirm the previous work and extend it to the context of fantasy baseball. Two samples of fantasy participants (football and baseball) were tested from a mechanistic dehumanization perspective. The results provide an opportunity for broadcasters, developers, teams, leagues, and even athletes to capitalize on the unique relationship between fantasy participants and professional athletes.
This paper employs panel data on Iranian soccer fan hooliganism (i.e., verbal
and physical aggression against rivals) to provide a longitudinal test of
Agnew’s general strain theory. Structural equation models reveal that the
experience of strain, a latent variable comprised of negative life events,
victimization, bullying, and economic pressures, is positively associated
with fan aggression. Moreover, the effects of these strains are both directly
and partially mediated through negative affect (state-based anger).
Fans’ consumption intentions towards their favourite teams’ products and services are essential outcome variables for sport federations and clubs. However, the factors that could affect these outcomes are not yet clear. This study analyzes how the fandom level and the innovativeness’s perceived organizational legitimacy impact their fans’ consumption intentions. Data was collected in Costa Rica by using a structured questionnaire. The results show that consumption intentions behaviour are partially mediated by the innovativeness perceived organizational legitimacy. Moreover, the multimedia consumption intention is moderated by normative interpersonal influence. Specifically, fans use the National Football team as a tool for their self-identity; while judgements made towards the National Football Federation’s innovation’ capacity to open new markets, regulate their consumption intentions. Hence, federations should create innovative legitimacy policies to ensure fans’ consumption intentions. These findings contribute to Social Identity and Social Judgement Theories showing how they are intertwined in a sport context.
American superhero movies are generally perceived as primarily targeted at a male audience. In China, however, females far outnumber males in the genre’s fan community. This phenomenon suggests that a popular text’s local negotiation can take on different paths when the text is consumed transnationally. To explore this process, this study examines how Chinese consumers of the Marvel franchise negotiate their gendered fandom in a global context. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 29 Chinese fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this study considers the power dynamics at work in the franchise’s global spread and local consumption.
Sports fans’ devotion and commitment to their team is well documented in the literature. Sports fanhood is described as a dominant component of fans’ identity, which is possibly why it is considered a comprehensive unqualified practice whose stability is undisputed. The current study examines whether and to what extent it is possible to identify fluctuations and changes in the nature and intensity of sports fanhood throughout fans’ lives. On the basis of variables taken from relevant models and interviews with soccer fans of various ages, the current study proposes an overarching view of the sports fan life cycle. As the heading for this model, the use of the life cycle concept is intentional: By tapping into various stages of this process, this study identifies an evolving reality that repeatedly reproduces itself in cyclic fashion over specific stages in a fan’s lifetime. Theoretically and practically, fanhood neither begins nor does it end at a specific point in time: Its dynamic nature encompasses processes that recur over a fan’s life and are passed down from one generation to the next. The proposed model enhances our understanding of the deep significance of sports fanhood and its role in fans’ lives as individuals, and as members of a family and members of a team or club.
Objective
The current article empirically investigated differences in fandom and rivalry between fans of a sport team and fans of the Marvel or DC comic brands.
Methods
An online survey was distributed to fans of a sport team and/or the comic genre to measure how fans identified with their favorite brands (both sport and comics), and how they felt toward their rival brands.
Results
Results illustrated that sport fans reported higher identification with their favorite teams than did fans of Marvel or DC toward their favorite brands. Additionally, fans of sport reported more negative perceptions of their rival teams than fans of the comic genre. Finally, people who were fans of both a sport team and the comic genre were more positive regarding their rival than fans who were a fan of only a sport team or the comic genre.
Conclusion
Theoretical implications include support for the measures in a nonsport setting along with support for the common in‐group model. Practical implications deriving from the findings are discussed, and avenues for future research are presented.
This article accounts for the allure of sports spectatorship in late capitalism by theorizing spectatorial communities as imagined communities. Building on the work of Benedict Anderson and others, and drawing on discourse around fandom in popular culture and the media, it argues that imagined communities of fandom function as sites of meaning and community within the alienating and individualist context of late capitalism. These communities are invented and continuously rehearsed through fetish spectacle and ritualistic practice and produce Manichean understandings of social relations that can lead to marginalization and violence.
In the present study we examined the relationship between felt stigma and fan group identification as well as potential mediators of this relationship. Fans of various interests (e.g., sport, music) completed measures regarding felt stigma toward the fan group, psychological needs obtained through group membership (e.g., self-esteem, belonging), and identification with the fan community. The results showed that felt stigma predicted fan group identification, and the relationship was mediated by a psychological need for belonging. The results support prior research regarding the association between stigma and identification. However, the results add to the literature by showing belongingness as a mediator of this association.
Eine grundlegende Publikation der zeitgenössischen Fanforschung in der überarbeiteten Neuauflage.
Fans sind ein weit verbreitetes und vielfältiges Phänomen: Menschen sind Fans von Fußballvereinen, Musikern, Filmstars, Automarken usw. Es gibt Fans in verschiedenen Altersgruppen und Schichten. Die hier versammelten Beiträge analysieren Fans hinsichtlich ihrer spezifischen Emotionalität, ihrer Kultur und Lebensführung, ihrer Sozialisation und Sozialstruktur, ihres Konsumverhaltens, ihrer Mediennutzung und ihrer politischen Partizipation. Thematisiert werden außerdem die internen Abgrenzungen in Fan-Szenen, Fragen der Migration und Globalisierung von Fans, Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Fan-Gemeinschaften sowie die Geschichte des Fantums.
Stimmen zur 1. Auflage
• „Von diesem Buch muss man wirklich sagen, dass es den ‚state of the art‛ eindrucksvoll repräsentiert.“ (socialnet)
• „Ein hoch interessantes und sehr lesenswertes Buch“ (Sport und Gesellschaft)
• „Ein lange überfälliges Buch, in dem alle Facetten des Fan-Seins und -werdens näher beleuchtet werden“ (Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen)
• „Das Werk vermittelt einen sehr guten Eindruck in die Fanszenen und in die Forschung zu diesem Thema“ (medien und erziehung)
• „Hat das Zeug zum Standardwerk, das mit richtungsweisenden Ideen und Hypothesen zu weitergehender Forschung einlädt.“ (PR Guide)
Die Herausgeber
Dr. Jochen Roose ist Professor für Sozialwissenschaften am Willy Brandt Zentrum für Deutschland- und Europastudien der Universität Wrocław.
Dr. Mike S. Schäfer ist Professor für Wissenschaftskommunikation am Institut für Publizistikwissenschaft und Medienforschung (IPMZ) der Universität Zürich.
Dr. Thomas Schmidt-Lux arbeitet als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Kulturwissenschaften der Universität Leipzig.
This article investigates the cultural implications of the internationalization of contemporary fantasy sports. In particular, it exposes previously unexplored distinctions between season-long North American and European fantasy sports (the two most prominent world markets). In order to contextualize these distinctions, first, this article provides a concise history of both North American and European fantasy sports, delineating briefly the philosophies that shaped them. Second, it examines the contrasting paradigms (i.e., the models by which fantasy sports are imagined, designed and played) of North America and Europe’s most popular fantasy sports – North American and European football – paradigms that reflect to various extents the hypercommodification and dehumanization of the athletes involved. On the basis of this examination, the article argues that the two frameworks produce disparate fan identities – that of ‘owners’ in North American fantasy football and of ‘managers’ in European fantasy football. Third, it makes a case for three possibilities as to how and why these differences may have arisen. Thus, the article utilizes the differences in the two models as a foundation for its contentions regarding the potential reasons for these distinctions and their cultural significance. This article forms part of the Special Issue ‘On the Move’, which marks the twentieth anniversary of European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die individuelle Seite der Fan-Medien-Beziehung zu beleuchten. In den empirischen Analysen werden drei Facetten dieser Beziehung für Fußballfans und Musikfans in den Blick genommen: erstens die Rolle, welche die traditionellen Massen-medien wie auch das Internet bei der Genese des Fan-Seins spielen; zweitens wird die Nutzung alter und neuer Medien durch Fans im Detail untersucht; drittens wird für Fußballfans die Annahme geprüft und bestätigt, eine Bindung an überlokale Fußballvereine als ein Indikator für die Teilhabe an „imaginierten Fangemeinschaften“ sei dann wahrscheinlicher, wenn man über das Medium Fernsehen zu seinem Fanobjekt gefunden hat.
Fans wollen etwas Besonderes sein. Sie fallen auf - jedenfalls wenn man gelernt hat, genau hinzusehen, und wollen dies in der Regel auch tun. Wie auch immer, ob der Wille etwas Besonderes zu sein, offensiv und auffällig in der Öffentlichkeit vorgetragen wird oder sich eher in distinguierten Formen in geschützten Räumen vollzieht, die Absicht seine Besonderheit zu inszenieren, gehört zu den wesentlichsten Kennzeichen jeden Fanseins. Im folgenden Text sollen einige zentrale Inszenierungsformen des Fanseins vorgestellt und in ihrer Bedeutung und Funktion analysiert werden.
Fankulturen werden oftmals geschlechtlich kodiert und stellen potenziell ein Forum für Auseinandersetzungen mit Fragen der Geschlechtsidentität dar. Am Beispiel der Kultur von Fußballfans sowie der Fans von Teenie-Pop-Gruppen werden im Beitrag die folgenden Fragen diskutiert: Auf welche Weise kann Geschlecht in Fan-Kulturen Bedeutung erlangen, und welche Umgangsweisen mit geschlechtlichen Bedeutungen lassen sich in diesen Kulturen beobachten? Inwiefern sind sie ein Ort der Reproduktion oder auch der Subversion konventioneller Geschlechter-Bilder im Sinne eines gender bendings? Abschließend werden die Konsequenzen dieser Diskussion sowohl für die Geschlechterforschung als auch für eine Soziologie der Fans erörtert.
Partizipation umfasst zwei Aspekte: Mitentscheidung und Mitwirkung. Der Beitrag betrachtet beide Aspekte mit Blick auf Fans. Dabei wird Hirschmanns berühmte Unterscheidung von Exit, Voice und Loyalty als Möglichkeiten der Reaktion auf Unzufriedenheit gegenüber einer Organisation für das Verständnis von Fans als loyalem Publikum nutzbar gemacht. Von Fans ist eine Unterstützung ihres Fanobjekts auch bei Unzufriedenheit zu erwarten. Zudem müssten nach Hirschman loyale Fans stärker zu Voice, also der Artikulation von Unzufriedenheit, neigen und weniger zur Abwanderung (Exit). Korrespondierend damit finden sich unter Sportfans auch vielfältige Formen von Unmutsäußerungen, was in anderen Fanbereichen seltener vorkommt. Allerdings gibt es auch unter Musik- und Filmfans eine große Minderheit, die meint, bei schlechten Entwicklungen ihres Fanobjekts die Stimme erheben zu müssen. Für eine Mitwirkung beim Fanobjekt finden sich eine Reihe von Beispielen. Die Online-Umfrage zeigt, dass Sport- und Musikfans zu großen Teilen eine Unterstützung ihres Fanobjekts, beispielsweise bei Veranstaltungen, als ihre Aufgabe betrachten, was Film- oder Buchfans eher nicht so sehen. Fantum kann für politische Partizipation in drei Weisen relevant sein: als Milieu für die Ausbildung politischer Szenen und im Sinne der Sozialkapitalthese als „Schule der Demokratie“ – wofür sich empirisch allerdings keine Anzeichen finden.
Die sozialwissenschaftliche Debatte über Globalisierung hat stärkere transnationale Bezüge in vielen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen beschrieben, Ursachen für die Globalisierung identifiziert und Folgen diskutiert. Aus dieser Diskussion ergeben sich Thesen für Fans, die im vorliegenden Beitrag anhand unterschiedlicher empirischer Studien diskutiert werden. Sie zeigen, dass es keinen einheitlichen Trend zu mehr ausländischen Fanobjekten gibt, wenn man die Titelblätter der Fan-Zeitschriften Kicker (für Fußball) und Bravo (für Musik und Film) zu Grunde legt. Beim Kicker nimmt der Anteil ausländischer Spieler auf dem Titelblatt erst zwischen 1996 und 2006 deutlich zu, während der Anteil zuvor konstant bleibt. Bei Film und Musik zeigen sich deutlichere Schwankungen, wobei der Anteil deutscher SchauspielerInnen und MusikerInnen ab Mitte der 1990er Jahre zunimmt. Die bei einer Online-Umfrage angegebenen Fanobjekte sind im Sport zu 96 % deutsch, in den anderen Bereichen liegen die Anteile deutlich niedriger. Ausländische Fanobjekte führen zu häufigeren Auslandsreisen und mehr transnationalen Kontakten zu anderen Fans. Musik, Film und Bücher führen nach Selbsteinschätzung auch zur Verbesserung von Fremdsprachkenntnissen.
Zwar ist erst zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts explizit von Fans die Rede. Doch schon lange davor lassen sich Beispiele finden, die aus heutiger Sicht ebenfalls als Fantum bezeichnet werden können. Der Aufsatz beschreibt diese Entwicklung von Fans und Fanobjekten seit der Antike. Abschließend wird danach gefragt, welche systematischen Veränderungen von Fans und Fantum sich im Laufe dieser Geschichte – etwa durch den Medienwandel – feststellen lassen.
Fans waren bislang kaum Gegenstand systematischer Theoriebildung. Der Beitrag unternimmt eine exemplarische Theoretisierung von Fans, indem er sich auf drei Fragen konzentriert und sich diesen drei theoretischen Richtungen nähert. Erstens werden die Gründe, Fan zu werden, mit der Rational Choice-Theorie als Strategie der Erlebnissteigerung interpretiert. Durch die langfristige Fanbeziehung mit ihren Ritualen und der Vorbereitung in der Fan-Gemeinschaft wird das Erlebnis intensiver und gleichzeitig erwartbarer. Zweitens wird das Agieren von Fans aus einer Goffman’schen Sicht als spezifische Interaktionsordnung betrachtet. Die Fan-Rolle bietet Möglichkeiten und Regeln einer Inszenierung. Drittens wird die soziale Ordnung innerhalb von Fan-Gemeinschaften mit Bourdieus Ansatz gefasst. Fan-Gemeinschaften folgen eigenen Ordnungen der Zuschreibung von Anerkennung nach Fan-spezifischen Kapitalien. Distinktionsgewinne lassen sich sowohl innerhalb der Fangemeinschaft als auch extern erzielen. In einer Freizeitgesellschaft könnten solche Kapitalien wichtiger werden. Insgesamt wird deutlich, dass verschiedene Theorierichtungen eine instruktive Basis für die Theoretisierung und damit das Verständnis des Gesellschaftsphänomens Fans bieten.
Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie der komplexe Zusammenhang zwischen Sozialisation und Fan oder Fantum verstanden und modelliert werden kann. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage werden in einem ersten Schritt zentrale Grundannahmen der Sozialisationsforschung systematisiert und darauf aufbauend Implikationen für den Bereich „Fan“ bzw. „Fantum“ abgeleitet. In einem zweiten Schritt wird dann ein Mehrebenen-Prozessmodell von Sozialisation und „Fan“ bzw. „Fantum“ vorgeschlagen mit dem sich Wechselwirkung zwischen Sozialisation und „Fan“ bzw. „Fantum“ in längsschnittlicher Perspektive explizieren und empirische beschreiben lassen. Den Abschluss bilden eine Zusammenfassung der Diskussion sowie ein Ausblick für die zukünftige Fan-Sozialisationsforschung.
Der Beitrag analysiert und diskutiert die Entwicklung sowie vor allem aktuelle Erkenntnisse und Perspektiven der Fanforschung aus kulturtheoretischer Sicht. Zunächst wird das Verhältnis von Fankultur und akademischer Kultur betrachtet. Es wird untersucht, welche Bedeutung der eigenen Involviertheit in das zu untersuchende Fantum von Wissenschaftlern und Wissenschaftlerinnen zugeschrieben wird. Dann wird die digitale Transformation der Fankulturen seit den 1990er Jahren näher betrachtet. Schließlich wird gefragt, ob die kreativen und widerspenstigen Aneignungspraktiken von Fans auch im 21. Jahrhundert Formen des Widerstandes und der Rebellion darstellen können.
Der Fan ist eine ↗ populäre Rezeptionsfigur, die sich durch spezifische Verhaltensweisen auszeichnet. Diese werden unter dem Begriff ›Fandom‹ zusammengefaßt, der darüber hinaus auch die Verbindung zu Gleichgesinnten und die Beziehung der Fans zu ihrem ↗Star beinhaltet. Fans demonstrieren ihr Interesse an den Stars öffentlich, z.B. bei Auftritten von Popstars oder Sportmannschaften, und sind daher die auffälligste Gruppe der Rezipienten Populärer Kultur (vgl. Lewis 1992, S. 1). Durch ihre Sichtbarkeit und Identifizierbarkeit ziehen die Fans Aufmerksamkeit auf sich, die sie immer wieder zum Thema in den ↗Medien macht und durch die sie in den letzen Jahren auch eine beliebte Untersuchungsgruppe in der Wissenschaft geworden sind.
Using a unique combination of cultural studies research, neo-pragmatist philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory, the author sheds light on the formation of a social identity and the important role that mass media play in this process. Case studies covering a range of media and communities provide a model for developing a truly explanatory as well as descriptive account of self-media interaction that bridges the two opposing sides of the media audience debate and provides a significant new dimension to notions of 'passive' and 'active' media audiences.