Sport identity representations in cyber societies: Netnographic analysis of fandom pages on Facebook

Author

Faculty of Mass Communication- Sinai University, Egypt

Abstract

The cyber communities of sports fans have attracted significant research interest, and many studies have dealt with the social and psychological phenomena associated with them, including sports identity. However, the Arab library faces a lack of such studies. Therefore, the current study sought to bridge this gap by exploring the representations of sports identity in cyber communities by applying it to the pages of Egyptian clubs fans on Facebook and employed the entrance of Netnography to analyze two pages: Magicano (a community for Al-Ahly club fans) and Italian Zamalkawy (a community for Zamalek club fans).
The study concluded that sports fans develop a common culture that stems from the unity of interest, goal, language, and threat and that their sports identity, which arises from the fusion of their identities in the collective identity, is represented in four categories: mobilizing, ridicule and sarcasm, support, and criticism. The pages mobilize their followers of the club’s supporters to encourage its teams in the various competitions, as well as use irony to mock its competitors, and it is keen in its posts to provide support and assistance to the club, and it is not absent from its criticisms against all elements of the sports system, including the chief boards of preferred clubs.

Keywords


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