Whether helping bring down a manager, marching against their club owner or pushing back against plans to commercialize football, fans use their passion for sport and culture to make social change. The articles in this issue show that fan activism isn’t a passing fad but an important part of the politico-economic life of sports and entertainment.
This special issue features a variety of cutting-edge work that takes fans seriously as political agents. The essays examine the specific contexts and issues around which fan activists coalesce and mobilize, including the articulation of fan identities through content creation (such as slash fan fiction) and the broader cultural traditions that shape participation and engagement in fandom. They also consider the glocal, relational nature of fan activism and its connections with other forms of social movement.
In one story, we explore what effect telling a protest story has on people’s attitudes toward the teenager whose death triggered the protest and their perceptions of the story’s credibility. We found that stories that humanized the teenager by sharing personal information, such as their personality, hobbies and family, resulted in more positive attitudes toward both the death and the protest. In contrast, stories that dehumanized the teenager — by including speculation about possible criminal activity or by portraying them as a monster — tended to generate more negative attitudes toward both the protest and its perpetrators.
Another piece focuses on the role of social media in fan activism, using Twitter and Facebook to highlight the importance of a community’s collective voice in influencing decisions by football clubs. Finally, an essay explores the contested spaces of soccer fandom in both Germany and Ukraine, demonstrating how a global network of supporters has a distinctly local flavor.