This document discusses how fans of the US women's national soccer team (USWNT) use the social media platform Tumblr to communicate about the team, share representations of players and events, and develop a sense of community. It analyzes a key game between the USWNT and Canada in 2013, noting how fans liveblogged the game, debated the controversy over US player Sydney Leroux's celebration after scoring, and reinforced or challenged narratives around nationalism, rivalry, and gender. The document concludes that the fandom actively shares information and cultural resources to derive personal and group identities in this online space.
3. Completing the Media Production
Process Cycle
• Research Q: In what ways are fans receiving,
using, (and resisting) discourses of mediated
sport in this online space…
• Retooling: What‟s happening here?
– How do fans become (better) fans?
– What kinds of activities/actions/tasks and which
become rituals and responsibilities?
– In what ways does the structure of Tumblr allow
the fandom to achieve its goals?
– How and why (and when) do they do what they
DO
4. Tumblr
• Social Networking Site (SNS) & Microblogging
platform
• Post Types: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio,
Video
• Actions: Post, Reblog, Like, Tag ♯USWNT
plus Ask, Anon, FanMail & Reporting
5. Representations & Accounts
• What the USWNT fandom actually discusses
and creates are representations of the
USWNT, players, other fans, opponents, and
other popular culture narratives.
• Mediated sport discourse, as well as USWNT
fandom Tumblr disourses, provide accounts
– version(s) of events that speak(s) to broader
social relationships, suggest understandings of
sexuality, national identities, and gender, and
imply relationships of power.
6. Developing Cultural Competencies
Using a variety of representations & accounts:
• “Learning” Enculturation
–Observation, Excitement, Picking up cues
–Doing it Wrong & Knowing it (Asking for Help)
• Being “Policed”
• Doing It right Discourse Work
• Refining Knowledge & Practice
• Connecting Monitoring
• Teaching others
• Monitoring: Fandom Police & Reporting
7. Doing Knowledge (Refining) Right
• Discourse work:
discourses are ways of referring to or
constructing knowledge about a particular
topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of
ideas, images and practices, which provide
ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and
conduct associated with, a particular topic,
social activity or institutional site in society (Hall,
1997: 6)
8. Knowledge Construction &
Building the Fandom
• Incorporate & Display sets of “Insider Knowledge”
• Insider knowledge within the USWNT fandom
often relates to player histories, player sexualities,
user/follower identities and preferences, and
relationships of competition or power within the
sporting world.
• This activity reinforces, reproduces, and
occasionally confronts ideologies
• Additional practices that make sets of knowledge
available to “imagined community” – through
tagging, categorization, and open
calls/announcements about content production
9. Built Through and Around
Existing Discourses…
• Family
• Sacrifice – Physical and Otherwise
• Nike: Great “ness”
• Dominance/Prowess of team (#1)
• „99ers
10. …Adding & Testing New Discourses
• Rivalries
• “Ships”
• Lack of Access (to media)
• Success & opportunity
• The Fandom IRL (games & supporters)
11. Liveblogging:
One (re)Match to Define Them All
• 02 June 2013 – Canada vs. USA Women‟s
Soccer “friendly” - BMO field, Toronto
• Dubbed “The Rematch” by organizing
bodies and fans alike
• Recalling nationalistic & sporting
memories from the 2012 Olympic Games
& Semi-final game between these teams (
referred to as #EPIC)
14. “The Rematch”
• Recalling: Olympic Semi-final 2012
– USWNT won 4-3 (ET)
• Rivalry: Contrasts & Blind Eye(s)
• Reactions: Both sides
USWNT winning 2-0 from two goals by Alex
Morgan. In the 74th minute, Canadian
American Sydney Leroux subs in…
20. Adding Fuel to the Fire
• Fans
– Booing, “Judas”
– Chanting: “Where‟s your father?”
– Counting (Re: Erin McLeod holding the ball in
2012)
• Commentators for Canadian broadcasters
deem Leroux‟s celebration:
– “Classless”
– “Way too American”
– “Ugh, you can keep her”
21.
22. Chat on the Tag: #USWNT
• Justifications
• F*ck You & Gloating (USWNT fans)
• Class/Classy/Classless & Winning With Grace
• Gold Medals & Goals
• Peacemakers – fans of both
• Using both tags – #USWNT & #CANWNT
• Passive on Moment, Active in Celebration
• Explanations of (experiences of) Racism
• What‟s NOT okay for fans to do/say
24. By the Numbers: Additional Data
• Top 20 posts from 02-03 June
– 18,844 notes of which
• 11,294 Reblogs
• 7,550 Likes
• 13 Content Providers for Top 20 posts
• 9 female, 1 male, 3 ? (no longer available/changed URL)
• All of Top 20 = Photo posts; 9 are actually GIFs
• Subject:
• 9 related to Syd & “incident”
• 4 of others & “quiet moments”
• 10 game related images
• 7 content providers – URL names reference USWNT
or players
25. Findings
• Enculturation – Discourse Work –
Monitoring
• Refining International Understandings
through the lens of Sporting Competition
• Sense of Community via Fandom
• Access through and Value in Knowledge
• Anyone is welcome, so long as you play
by the rules
26. Implications
• Many moments add up: the fandom
appears to actively use and repopulate
these information flows and cultural
resources from which personal and group
identities are derived and articulated in this
digital space
• Useful insights for community studies,
communication studies; Marketing +
Communications from official governing
bodies and federations
27. Next Steps
- - - - - - - -
• What and Who is missing? (Which
Discourses? Which voices?)
• Melding fan experiences IRL, NWSL and
USWNT resources, and Tumblr
• How do fans move from newbie to fan to
content provider to mastery (not
necessarily linear!!) in this specific space?
Individuals learn about the world around them and social and cultural roles through a combination of experience, communication, and cultural practices. This paper has explored the ways in which learning has been applied in USWNT fandom and identities and knowledge sets are continually expressed, contested, and confirmed as a process of discursive activity - making choices with language.Finally, I would perhaps like to speculate that these digital discussions and communications demonstrate broadening mediated sport discourses. Also challenged through the process of exchange and communication, these choices are, in the process, moving the discourse of the current USWNT away from the heteronormative presentation of the ‘99ers (the USWNT that won the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup). This is a moment of note for the fandom and in (re)framing the values of this cultural resource from which information may be drawn (upon/from) in the process of articulating personal identities.
