Online Community or Electronic Tribe? Exploring the Social Characteristics and Spatial Production of an Internet Hockey Fan Culture

Virtual Communities, Electronic Tribes, and the Conceptualization of Online Sport Fan Cultures

Many of the earliest researchers of online social formations used the concept of community to describe and explain the collective electronic interaction that they observed (cf. Fernback, 2007). Evocatively titled publications, such as The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (Rheingold, 1993) and “The Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication” (Baym, 1995), highlighted the ways in which human beings were using new communication technologies to engage virtually with like-minded individuals and to form quasi-permanent social formations online. As research in this area flourished, however, many scholars began to question the appropriateness of the community label. As Hine (2008) explains, “ethnographers in online settings have . . . found that the model of online community fails to do justice to the full spectrum of Internet social interaction” (p. 257). Fernback (2007), meanwhile, argues that only a small number of characteristics traditionally understood to define community—such as fellowship, social inclusion, and commitment—are found in online groups. Fernback’s criticism, particularly about the absence of commitment in online groups, raises important questions for researchers about what online social groupings, if any, can be considered communities and what labels are appropriate for defining these groups.

An alternative concept for exploring online social groups, including those of sport fans, is provided in Adams and Smith’s (2008) description of electronic tribes. Drawing on the theorization of neotribalism developed by French sociologist Michel Maffesoli (1996), Adams and Smith describe electronic tribes as fluid, postmodern groups that reflect human desires for social interaction, group belonging and information sharing:

An electronic tribe [is] an exclusive narrowly focused, network-supported, aggregate of human beings in cyberspace who are bound together by a common purpose and employ a common protocol and procedure for the consensual exchange of information and opinions (p. 17).

Adams and Smith (2008) identify the four key components of an electronic tribe as “people, purposes, protocols, and technology” (p. 16). In other words, the formation of electronic tribes hinges on the use of technology by individuals to form social groups that are based on a common purpose and that, over time, develop group roles and norms. According to Adams and Smith, although neo- and electronic tribes may share characteristics with communities, they are differentiated by their smaller sizes and more fluid spatial and social boundaries. Because of its recognition of the ways in which people interact electronically, the ways in which Internet groups form and develop, and the neotribal fluidity of online identities and social formations, the concept of electronic tribes offers a valuable lens through which to examine the social worlds of online sport fan groups.

Sport Fan Cultures and New Media

Although not specifically mentioned by Adams and Smith (2008), one common identity around which electronic tribes have formed is that of the sport fan. As Crawford (2004) noted 8 years ago, Internet technologies have significantly impacted sport fandom by allowing supporters to connect across time and space to form online groups with individuals who share their specialized interests. In recent years, the number of such online sport fan groups has skyrocketed—the contemporary sports “blogosphere,” for example, includes thousands of fan-operated blogs that cover a huge range of topics and perspectives. As of September, 2012, SB Nation (SBN), the host network for Nucks Misconduct, alone consists of 322 blogs dedicated to professional sport teams in North America and Europe, a wide range of U.S. college teams, and specific sports such as mixed martial arts and golf. SBN blogs, as will be discussed, are explicitly constructed as communities where individuals from around the world can gather and interact based around their shared sport fandom.

Although there is a growing body of literature that examines the multifaceted relationship between sport and new media and a well-established body of scholarship on sport fan cultures, the online social formations and interactions of sport fans remain underexplored. Although space does not permit a full review of the research in this area, notable contributions to the understanding of online sport fan groups include Ferriter’s (2009) examination of how engagement with the construction of sport-related Wikipedia pages helps construct an imagined community of sport fans; Hardin’s (2011) examination of the “fragmented collective” of women’s sport bloggers; and an examination by Hutchins, Rowe, and Ruddock (2009) of MyFootballClub, a member-owned English football club whose decision-making is collectively conducted online by its tens of thousands of members. These studies point to the diversity and fluidity of such online social formations and highlight the ways in which scholars can examine the collective interaction of sport fans in an online environment.

Adams and Smith’s (2008) concept of electronic tribes provides a valuable lens through which to examine such online sport fan formations, particularly because it extends the existing research on the neotribal characteristics of sport fan cultures (cf. Crawford, 2004; Giulianotti, 2004; Hughson, 1999; Hughson, Inglis, & Free, 2005) into the online realm. Crawford (2004) suggests that neotribalism offers a particularly profitable perspective from which to study fan groups because it “recognizes that individuals may belong to numerous communities and groups, which will have varying levels of influence on their lives and identities, and they can frequently move in and out of these in their everyday lives” (p. 41). Understanding online sport fan groups as electronic tribes thus helps to explain many of the neotribal characteristics of these social formations.

Internet fan groups such as Nucks Misconduct feature members of varying degrees of commitment who simultaneously participate in the social world of a wide variety of other online and offline groups. Many members move between and adapt to new online cultures with relative ease, and their presence in the group waxes and wanes over time depending on other social commitments or interests. And although they are geographically dispersed—Nucks Misconduct, for example, has members who live on all continents except for Antarctica—many members share a collective sense of place on the blog. As will be discussed, adopting a neotribal approach to examining online sport fan groups also helps to explore the tensions between the traditionally dominant social characteristics of certain sports and the fluid identities associated with membership in an electronic tribe. With regard to Nucks Misconduct, it is particularly interesting to examine how interaction within the electronic tribe replicates or challenges the historic construction of Canadian hockey as an exclusionary masculine realm, and to explore whether and to what extent new media fan groups can challenge such entrenched power structures.

New Media and the Cultural Meaning of Hockey in Canada

Although Nucks Misconduct has a transglobal membership, its focus is on a Canadian hockey team and the majority of its members who have publicly divulged their location reside in Canada. Although hockey culture has developed in locally specific ways in different parts of the world, Canada is the sport’s country of origin and had a significant impact on its international growth (Kivinen, Mesikämmen, & Metsä-Tokila, 2001; Stark, 2012). Although it is important to recognize that the dominant Canadian-based hockey culture may be interpreted and embodied in diverse ways in different places, it is nonetheless helpful to review the literature on hockey culture in Canada to help understand the context in which the Nucks Misconduct culture is situated.

A large body of research has confirmed that Canadian hockey culture has historically been constructed overwhelmingly as a White, masculine, and heterosexual realm. With regard to gender, Robidoux (2002) documents how hockey was, from its outset, constructed as a sport through which a nascent Canadian identity could be forged through an emphasis on a physically aggressive masculinity. Meanwhile, Allain (2008) confirms that these traits are still highly prized in elite Canadian men’s hockey. Reflecting on hockey’s cultural status in an increasingly diverse Canadian society, Adams (2006) demonstrates how mythologies that promote and sustain the link between hockey and “Canadianness” continue to overwhelmingly privilege White males and exclude most females. Even the rapid rise of women’s hockey in North America over the past two decades has not changed the hegemonic understanding of the sport as masculine, as female hockey is widely viewed as inferior to the men’s version (Stevens, 2006). Meanwhile, with regard to race, Pitter (2006) examines how racist structures within Canada and within hockey culture have rendered invisible narratives of hockey players of color. This argument is supported by a study by Poniatowski and Whiteside (2012), which found that television broadcasts of Canadian men’s hockey games at the 2006 Winter Olympics constructed a hockey Whiteness based around a supposed superiority on the part of White Canadian players. The exclusionary nature of hockey is particularly problematic when the sport is understood at a popular level as a metaphor for, or is even conflated with, Canadian identity(cf. Adams, 2006; Gruneau & Whitson, 1993).

Despite the hegemonic construction of Canadian hockey culture, the social meanings attached to the sport may be shifting somewhat. Wilson (2006), in an exploration of hockey in contemporary Canadian society, notes that although the sport remains a significant social institution for many Canadians, its cultural resonance is diminishing. As culturally diverse Canadian youth are increasingly exposed to a wide array of sport (and nonsport) practices, they are forming fluid and hybridized neotribal identities. In this context, hockey is just one of many cultural practices through which Canadians may, or may not, negotiate their identities (Wilson, 2006).

The rise of neotribal identification with and participation in hockey (Wilson, 2006) not only speaks to the need to reevaluate the assumed cultural significance of the sport in Canadian society, but also points to the ways in which the sport’s cultural meaning has become increasingly fluid and less fixed. It is not clear, however, if or how the sport’s shifting cultural significance will transform its exclusionary social characteristics. It appears, however, that a limited renegotiation of hockey’s assumed masculine and heterosexual character may be occurring within both fan and player cultures; and that new media, in particular blogs, have become key sites at which this process is taking place. For example, despite the fact that women’s hockey continues to receive extremely low levels of mainstream media coverage compared with the men’s game (Adams, 2006), a wide variety of blogs promote and analyze women’s hockey or celebrate female hockey fandom. ¹ Meanwhile, the recently launched You Can Play Project, ² an antihomophobia hockey initiative that has received significant support from NHL players and fans, leverages new media such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to promote its message. You Can Play has also received widespread support from many hockey fan bloggers. ³ There are numerous other examples of hockey fans and players leveraging new media to promote discourses and visions that run counter to the hegemonic social construction of the sport as a masculine and heterosexual domain.

However, although such new media initiatives suggest that a progressive shift is taking place within hockey, it is important to recognize that existing power structures are deeply embedded in the sport’s culture and that Canadian hockey remains overwhelmingly White, heterosexual, and masculine. Furthermore, although my extensive experience in new media fan cultures suggests growing support for female fans and players or acceptance of gay athletes, I have not observed a similar recognition of or challenge to hockey’s Whiteness (cf. Pitter, 2006; Poniatowski & Whiteside, 2012). Negotiations of race and sexuality among hockey fans have not featured prominently thus far in my observation of the culture of Nucks Misconduct, although they certainly beg deeper exploration in future research on this and other Internet sport fan groups. The data I have collected this far do, however, suggest that new media fan cultures may be social formations in which the masculine dominance of hockey is, if not directly challenged, at least thrown somewhat into flux. This is discussed in later sections with reference to the rise of electronic tribes (Adams & Smith, 2008) and the shifting cultural meaning of hockey in Canada in an era of increased neotribal identification (Wilson, 2006).

Method

My research is based on nearly 3 years of involvement in the social world of Nucks Misconduct, a fan-produced blog that is focused on the Vancouver Canucks, a Canadian-based team in North America’s National Hockey League (NHL). Nucks Misconduct is part of the much broader SBN blog network, which includes more than 300 fan-run sports blog and receives more than 20 million unique visitors every month (SB Nation, n.d.). I joined Nucks Misconduct in August 2009, and shortly thereafter was invited by the site’s editors to contribute to the blog as a writer. Nucks Misconduct’s writing crew has since grown to include 9 regular contributors, while membership has also grown significantly to more than 2,000 people. As of September, 2012, my relatively modest contribution to the blog has included publishing 65 articles and 28 shorter posts and posting more than 3,600 comments.

Given my long-term immersion in the Nucks Misconduct community, my methodological approach is best described as a virtual ethnography, in which conventional ethnographic principles of long-term cultural immersion, participant observation, and progressive data collection and analysis are adapted to online environments (Hine, 2008). My findings and analysis must therefore be understood as situated within my own continually developing understanding of the online culture I have been researching. I am also aware that, despite the possibilities seemingly offered in online environments for the diminishment of categories of social marginalization, my own intersecting axes of privilege—I am a young, White, heterosexual, and educated North American male—both contour my experiences in the online social world and afford me access to online opportunities that may not be available to persons of marginalized status.

It is important for researchers to grapple with the ethical implications of Internet research and the representation of data collected online, especially as official guidelines may not adequately protect research participants in cyberspace. For example, Canada’s most recent set of ethical guidelines, the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, liberally asserts that “cyber-material . . . to which the public is given uncontrolled access on the Internet for which there is no expectation of privacy is considered to be publicly available information” (CIHR, NSERC, & SSHRC, 2010, p. 18). American funding agencies advance similarly simplistic definitions of ethical research that may not be appropriate in online environments (cf. Markham, 2012). This may be problematic because, as Hine (2008) perceptively notes, “whilst many Internet environments are publicly accessible . . . for those involved the interactions in question might be deeply intimate and be experienced as if they were private” (p. 265). Similarly, Markham (2012) argues that considering online interaction within a public/private binary neglects the critical issue of how information is transmitted and used. In particular, she expresses concern that online interactions or self-representations may be presented in ways that the participants would not approve of; and she suggests, therefore, that fabricating interactions may represent an ethical approach to negotiating the issues of privacy, vulnerability, and harm (Markham, 2012).

Although my research was conducted entirely in the public domain at a popular website, the warnings of Hine (2008) and Markham (2012) have led me to make cautious and considered ethical choices about my presentation of data. Although it is compelling, I did not adopt Markham’s suggestion of fabrication for two reasons: because my own multiplatform online persona makes complete anonymity impossible; ⁴ and because discussions about SBN and Canadian hockey culture, which I consider necessary to this article’s analysis, provide enough clues to make the source of my data traceable. However, I have chosen not to identify members’ usernames or to provide the specific source of quotations, which minimizes, but certainly does not eliminate, the possibility of an online persona being linked to a particular quotation. I have also chosen to avoid reporting interactions that I consider to be of a personal nature, to quote only from regular participants in the social world of Nucks Misconduct, ⁵ and to avoid including as data interactions I have had, whether online or offline, with blog members outside of the public comment sections of Nucks Misconduct blog posts. ⁶ Furthermore, I solicited feedback about my research and my ethical choices from the three administrators of Nucks Misconduct, all of whom approved of my approach and agreed that my ethical decisions were respectful of the blog’s membership.

These ethical choices to not guarantee the anonymity of blog members, as it is feasible that comments quoted in this article could be linked with a member’s offline identity. However, I have relied on my considerable experience within the blog’s social world to interpret potential risks and harm to participants, to ensure that quoted interactions are representative of typical communication on the blog, and to quote and analyze only those comments whose publication I believe will pose minimal or no risk of harm to blog members. Although these decisions far exceed the demands of ethics guidelines such as the Canadian Tri-Council Policy, I feel that they represent a respectful and ethical approach toward the membership of Nucks Misconduct and adhere to Markham’s (2012) argument that “the ambiguity of the meaning of privacy, harm, or vulnerability requires researchers to make informed decisions about their practice on a case-by-case basis” (p. 337).

Virtual Topography and theSpatial Construction of Nucks Misconduct

As Hughson (1999) explains, neotribalism is intimately connected with the “collective quest for space” (p. 23). For electronic tribes, the primary place at which the group congregates is, of course, virtual (Adams & Smith, 2008). However, as Hughson et al. (2005) note with specific regard to online sport fandom, “if we consider web-based supporter groups as neotribes then the supporter space is predominantly a virtual one, but a lived and occupied space nonetheless” (p. 103). Any exploration of neotribal social formations in cyberspace must therefore take account of both their collectively constructed geographies and the topographical features that contour their social interactions. Thus, Nucks Misconduct should be understood not simply as a website with static features, but rather as a space that is shaped and given social meaning through the ongoing interaction of its members. To explore this spatial construction, I deploy the distinct, but related, terms virtual topography and virtual geography. I use the term topography according to its conventional definition, that is as a description of the way in which features of a particular area are arranged, in reference to the spatial layout of the Nucks Misconduct website; and I employ the term virtual geography to describe the space that is constructed through the social interaction of the blog’s members (cf. Giese, 1998). In later sections, I examine how the virtual geography of Nucks Misconduct is constructed through two spatial metaphors that construct the hockey fan blog space as a place of belonging for an electronic tribe. First, however, I explore the ways in which aspects of the blog’s virtual topography enable or constrain the social interaction of its members.

The virtual topography of Nucks Misconduct must be understood in light of its placement in the much larger SBN network. SBN is owned by Vox Media, a company that owns a number of online media outlets, and is financially supported a number of investment firms. ⁷ Although a detailed exploration of the political economy of SBN is beyond the scope of this article, the network’s for-profit status is notable here for its effect on the topographical construction of individual blogs. In particular, SBN blogs share a similar general layout, including the placement of website features and the SBN logo, and prominently feature a variety of advertisements. However, although they share similar design features, individual SBN blogs are afforded a significant amount of leeway to construct unique spaces that are tailored to their subject matter and membership. This is reflected in the creative names and logos of different blogs and the fact that each blog has a unique URL, rather than one that is derived from SBN’s Internet address. The name of Nucks Misconduct, for example, combines a nickname for the Vancouver Canucks (“Nucks”) and a reference to a hockey penalty given for extreme rule violations (“Misconduct”). Meanwhile, the blog’s logo features three upraised fists, with arms clad in a plaid shirt reminiscent of the ‘Johnny Canuck’ lumberjack that serves as an alternative logo for the Vancouver hockey team, saluting another plaid-clad arm that is holding a hockey stick. These individualized features, though constrained by the standardization imposed by SBN, give the blog a distinct appearance and style. In tandem with the fan culture that has developed through the interaction of its members, the individualized topographical features of Nucks Misconduct contribute to the construction of the blog as a unique social space.

A critical topographical feature of all SBN blogs for fostering social interaction is the comment thread ⁸ that appears at the bottom of each blog entry. Because all SBN users are identified by a unique username that is linked to a personal profile, comments are attributed to the member who posted it and, over time, members can craft online personas within their electronic tribe. Comment threads are hubs of social interaction on SBN blogs. On Nucks Misconduct, daily posts during the Canucks’ season commonly receive hundreds of comments from members. Meanwhile, live game threads during Canucks matches typically attract between 500-1,000 comments from dozens of different members, numbers that can increase significantly during particularly important games. Comment threads on Nucks Misconduct are not simply a place for discussion about the Canucks or other hockey-related issues—they are also sites at which group norms are developed and refined, at which individual online personas are developed, and at which committed members become established through their social engagement within the electronic tribe. Discussion in comment threads regularly strays far from hockey-related matters, and it is common for members to share details from their offline lives that range from the mundane (e.g., what they had for dinner) to the deeply intimate (e.g., personal stories about struggles with mental illness). Through an exploration of these interactions, which are enabled by the virtual topography of the SBN network, I examine in the next two sections how dedicated Nucks Misconduct members deploy and negotiate two metaphors—that of a community and that of a pub—to construct the space of the blog into a place of belonging for the electronic tribe. In both cases, I explore tensions and ambiguities within these virtual geographies and discuss exclusionary aspects arising from these constructions.

Nucks Misconduct Culture and the Metaphor of Community

Although the description of online groups as communities is contested in the academic literature on Internet-based social interaction, Nucks Misconduct is explicitly identified as a community by aspects of its virtual topography and, more critically, the social interaction of its members. The topographical construction of Nucks Misconduct as a community is evident on the blog’s front page, at which the following message greets visitors and members alike: “Welcome to the Nucks Misconduct community! We scour the web to promptly bring you all of the Vancouver Canucks news when it happens in highly opinionated fashion.” This message immediately establishes the blog as not just a space for the mere sharing of information and opinion about the Canucks, but also as a place for participation in a community of like-minded fans. This is consistent with the broader construction of SBN as a network of sport fan communities. SBN explicitly claims to have “developed and nurtured a network of strong communities known for intelligent conversation” (SB Nation, n.d., para. 2).

Although elements of Nucks Misconduct’s virtual topography describe the blog as a community, it is members themselves who have most prominently constructed this understanding of the blog through their social interactions. In comment thread discussions, many members emphasize the value of the social interaction they enjoy on the blog and use the label of community to describe the blog’s membership. Meanwhile, seemingly in an effort to develop a friendly and inclusive group culture, many regular members make a point of welcoming newcomers to the blog and emphasizing its sociability. For example, in response to the first comment posted on Nucks Misconduct by an SBN user, two different members responded:

Both statements are typical of the reactions that most new posters receive from established Nucks Misconduct members, and these interactions are part of a generally inclusive vibe among the blog’s membership. This friendly culture contributes to a fairly egalitarian ethos within the blog’s culture. Members’ opinions are generally respected and when disagreements occur they are usually resolved amicably and respectfully. This egalitarianism, however, has some limitations. New participants, particularly those who wish to engage in arguments or disagreements about topics of discussion, may have to prove themselves through regular participation before their views are widely acknowledged and respected. For example, after a new member made a lengthy and provocative post about a Canucks player, a regular member questioned her/his motives:

I welcome all opinions even if i disagree, but when someone appears to join the community purely to write a provocative article that doesn’t appear to be in line with reality, the optics are questionable.

Reactions such as this raise questions about membership in the constructed community of Nucks Misconduct and speak to a conservatism underlying the blog’s seemingly egalitarian culture. New members seemingly have to earn the right to make controversial statements or question the status quo, and failing to do so may result in censure from more established members. Although this is partially an attempt to weed out “trolls” who join the blog simply to insult the Canucks or their fans, ⁹ it also raises questions about how much space there is in this online fan culture to present alternative or subversive viewpoints. It should be noted, however, that members do discuss these questions, and this particular comment launched a brief discussion about the merits of the poster’s arguments and the role of dissenting viewpoints within the blog’s discussions.

The comment also points toward important questions about how the metaphor of community is deployed within the Nucks Misconduct culture and who is and is not included in this metaphorical construction. Reflecting the fluid neotribal characteristics of online sport fandom, any person who is registered with SBN can become a member of any of its more than 300 blogs with the click of a button. By doing so, she/he gains the ability to post comments at—in other words, to join the social world of—these blogs. There is, therefore, a huge amount of variability in the type and extent of social participation by members: the thousands of Nucks Misconduct members are an overlapping mix of regular and infrequent participants, diehard and casual Canucks fans, supporters of other NHL teams, and lurkers who join the site but do not post comments. By deploying a metaphor of community to describe this eclectic and fluid group of individuals, dedicated members of Nucks Misconduct appear to be attempting to establish a more solid identity for the blog’s social world than is provided by its neotribal characteristics.

During my research, I have observed that there are two central and interrelated components to this construction of Nucks Misconduct as a community, both of which reflect characteristics of neo- and electronic tribes: the establishment of the blog as a distinct territory or place; and a distinction between membership on the blog and belonging to the social group that inhabits it. These two processes of community construction are demonstrated in the following comments, which were part of an extremely heated exchange that drew in 11 Nucks Misconduct members and consisted of 73 separate comments. The argument began in response to a comment by a fan of another NHL team who is a regular participant at Nucks Misconduct. The comment, which was critical of some Canucks players, drew a negative response from many members; the discussion quickly escalated to the point that many members perceived the initial commenter to be attacking not only the Canucks and their fans, but also the Nucks Misconduct membership itself. Three comments from different members, the first of which was posted by the controversial commenter, capture much of the tone of the discussion:

Although this exchange was somewhat exceptional compared with typical interactions between members, it is nonetheless representative of the general ways in which some members use territorial language to construct a particular vision of community and to distinguish Nucks Misconduct from other online fan groups. The comments highlight how dedicated Nucks Misconduct members may distinguish between the technical process of gaining membership to the website and actual belonging to the blog’s perceived community. Both the second and third comments acknowledge that the rival fan is a regular participant on Nucks Misconduct, yet they subtly cast her/him as an outsider by suggesting that she/he is not part of the community she/he is perceived to have insulted. This distinction is created in part by the use of spatial metaphors of physical territory to construct a sense of place and belonging for the electronic tribe, particularly through the use in both comments of the word “here” to suggest that Nucks Misconduct is a location in which the fan community is anchored. Furthermore, the third comment paints the initial commenter as an outsider by suggesting that her/his community lies at another SBN blog. The comment further constructs Nucks Misconduct as a distinct territory and community by contrasting it favorably with this other blog, which is dismissed as a “cesspool of hate.”

This use of language, exemplified by the exchange between members, suggests that the territorial construction of Nucks Misconduct as a community makes the blog a place into which outsiders may pass, but in which their mere presence will not automatically gain them full social inclusion. This supports Giese’s (1998) assertion that “although one becomes “visible” in [an online group] by posting, visibility does not necessarily guarantee inclusion in the community. In part, inclusion depends on a communal sense of territory that differs from group to group” (p. 159, emphasis added). Thus, for some Nucks Misconduct members, the construction of the blog as a community anchored in a place seemingly serves to establish insider and outsider status within its social world. This is consistent with a key characteristic of neo- and electronic tribes, namely “the proclivity for members of a close-knit unit to construct a consciousness of emotional attachment toward one another, and a corresponding sense of group difference from others who are notionally located outside the orbit of the tribe” (Adams & Smith, 2008, p. 16-17). The ways in which Nucks Misconduct members use the metaphor of community to construct such a sense of group difference clashes with the egalitarian ethos that seemingly characterizes much of the blog’s culture. There is thus an unresolved tension in the double-edged meaning of the community label, which regular Nucks Misconduct members seemingly deploy both to acknowledge a communal feeling of belonging and to discursively exclude certain members from full acceptance in the blog’s social world.

Hanging Out at the Pub? The Significanceof the Sports Bar as Spatial Metaphor

A second, and subtler, metaphor for the social world of Nucks Misconduct is found in an SBN-imposed element of the blog’s virtual topography. At the bottom of all SBN blogs, the site’s editors, administrators, writers, and/or moderators are listed by their unique username—this feature identifies who on a specific blog is a producer of content or a moderator of discussion. Although this public recognition of administrative roles occurs across all SBN blogs, administrators have the freedom to label the various roles as they choose, and thus to construct individual blogs as unique social spaces. Many SBN blogs use straightforward descriptions of roles (e.g., “Editor-in-Chief” and “Writers” ¹⁰ ) that emphasize the production of journalistic content pertaining to the team or sport on which they are focused. Although the regular publication of hockey commentary is an important aspect of Nucks Misconduct as a blog, this is downplayed in the labeling of its administrative roles as “Bartenders” (editors/administrators), “Pub Regulars” (contributing writers), and, until recently, a “Bouncer” (moderator). These roles construct Nucks Misconduct’s virtual geography as the space of a pub or bar, and thus emphasize the social aspects of the blog over its provision of information.

Despite its prominent placement at the bottom of all pages at Nucks Misconduct, the pub metaphor does not explicitly frame social interaction on the blog and, unlike the metaphor of community, is rarely directly acknowledged by members—although a number of social rituals, such as describing the alcoholic beverages individuals are consuming during a game, do suggest that it is a somewhat appropriate descriptor. Despite being infrequently taken up by members, the metaphor of a pub is nonetheless significant to the way in which Nucks Misconduct is constructed as a place. In particular, the metaphor constructs the blog as a social space; downplays the power differentials between the few members with administrative roles and the vast majority who do not hold these privileged statuses; and reflects the destabilization, though not the elimination, of the gendered construction of both hockey culture and the sports bar as exclusively masculine domains.

As discussed earlier, Nucks Misconduct members generally pride themselves on being welcoming and accepting of participants on the site. The blog’s culture, although in tension with exclusionary aspects of the construction of a metaphorical community, is fairly egalitarian in its treatment of regular members. The description of the blog-as-pub reinforces this ethos by deploying a playful spatial metaphor to construct Nucks Misconduct as principally a social space. This emphasis on the social pervades a number aspects of Nucks Misconduct, from the tone of many posts, to the welcoming environment on comment threads, to the communal experience of sharing the consumption of Canucks games through live game threads. However, unlike new media that seemingly have the potential to be fully democratic, such as wikis, SBN blogs such as Nucks Misconduct have an inherent social hierarchy based upon the administrative roles that are held by a very small minority of members. This hierarchy, which is reinforced by the visibility and status afforded by the public display of these roles on all of the blog’s webpages, seemingly clashes with the egalitarianism that pervades much of the Nucks Misconduct’s social interactions.

The pub metaphor helps to somewhat resolve this tension by downplaying the power differentials that are created by SBN’s imposition of administrative roles—labeling an editor as a “Bartender” rather than an “Editor-in-Chief,” for example, helps construct a more welcoming environment in which members who produce content for the blog are cast as facilitators of social interaction rather than as hockey experts. This process is reinforced by the “Bartenders” themselves, who not only established the pub metaphor but who also appear to be among the most eager members to construct the blog as a community of equals. For example, in a discussion that revolved around fan bloggers who get hired by major newspapers, one of the Nucks Misconduct “Bartenders” explained that the social interaction he enjoys on the blog would trump the prestige of becoming a mainstream journalist:

If the MSM [mainstream media] ever approached me [to become a journalist] I’d tell them to pound sand. . . . I’d rather stick with this community right here. Because really that is what it is, and you don’t get that anywhere else [online] except on message boards.

Paradoxically, although it seemingly contributes to an egalitarian ethos within the Nucks Misconduct culture, the pub metaphor is also evocative of exclusionary masculine sport cultures that centre upon drinking and watching sport. Wenner (1998) explains this well-established relationship between sport, alcohol, and masculinity, noting that “not only do both public drinking and participation in sports often serve as masculine rites of passage, their spaces and places often serve as refuge from women” (p. 303). Canadian hockey culture particularly fits Wenner’s description, given the sport’s hegemonic construction as a masculine realm (cf. Adams, 2006) and its well-established relationship with alcohol. ¹¹ Wenner (1998) further explains that the sport-alcohol-masculinity nexus is given a specific place through the socially constructed space of the sports bar:

The sports bar brings together the cultural streams of drinking and sports at a place. . . . On a basic level the sports bar is a drinking place. On another, sitting at the intersection of drinking and sports, it is masculine (p. 317).

Although it has traditionally been understood as a masculine realm, Wenner (1998) suggests that the social meaning attached to the sports bar is shifting. He argues, therefore, that one must differentiate between the well-established space of the local sports bar and the recent emergence of the postmodern sports bar. Whereas the former reflects the sport-alcohol-masculinity nexus, the latter’s stylistic excess and orientation toward experiential consumption throw into flux the gendered meaning attached to the sports bar as a place for the masculine celebration of sport fandom (Wenner, 1998).

Nucks Misconduct, insofar as it is constructed as a pub, seems to straddle the line between the local and postmodern sports bar. It is local, inasmuch as it is a welcoming social space populated by many regulars who, through years of interaction, have developed online (and, in some cases, offline) relationships. Yet the blog is, given the neotribalism that characterizes its membership, very much in line with Wenner’s vision of the postmodern sports bar: it has a large and varied membership, many of whom have little or no attachment to the blog as a social place; it is a place in which people not only consume hockey, but also seek other forms of entertainment through jokes, memes, and links to other websites; and, while maintaining some elements of masculine sport culture, it is a group in which fans who identify as female are welcomed and is hardly a male “refuge from women” (Wenner, 1998, p. 303). This varied picture of the contemporary online hockey fan is consistent with Wilson’s (2006) observation that hockey’s prominence in Canadian culture, though still significant, has been diluted as the sport increasingly becomes just one of a wide range of products that may be consumed in the construction of a neotribal identity.

Despite being a generally welcoming environment for many female hockey fans—there are a significant number of dedicated members who have publicly identified themselves as females—Nucks Misconduct does reflect some of the masculinist characteristics of both hockey and local sports bar cultures. Although members have never, in my observation, discriminated against or insulted fans who identify as female, many do subtly confirm the hegemonic understanding of hockey as a masculine realm by assuming a member to be male unless she identifies otherwise through her username, profile, and/or interactions in comment threads. This has been demonstrated many times in interactions in which gender-unidentified members are referred to using male pronouns or in which newcomers to the blog assume, until corrected, that female members are men. Thus, the blog is paradoxically a space in which female fans play a major social role yet one in which a masculine identity is the assumed norm for the hockey fan.

Discussion: Online Community or Electronic Tribe?

Nucks Misconduct’s virtual geography has been constructed around the metaphors of a community and a pub, the latter of which is far less frequently taken up by the blog’s membership. Members’ limited deployment of the pub metaphor may reflect unease with its ambiguity. The blog-as-pub is partway between the local and postmodern sports bar (Wenner, 1998), neither an exclusive social formation nor a wholly postmodern space that privileges individual consumerism over collective interaction. In many ways, this unresolved tension makes the pub an ideal explanatory metaphor for the clash between the localized masculinity that has historically characterized hockey cultures and the fluid neotribal social formations of electronic tribes. Furthermore, the blurred line between Nucks Misconduct’s metaphorical construction as either a local or postmodern sports bar may explain the ambiguity of its gendered character. Just as the postmodern sports bar appropriates features of the local sports bar yet throws their social meaning into flux (Wenner, 1998), Nucks Misconduct’s culture reflects some of hockey’s historically masculine character at the same time as it suggests the possibility of developing egalitarian online cultures in which fans are accepted equally regardless of their gender.

The ambiguity of the pub metaphor may also explain why members deploy it far less frequently than the community label, as the concept of community may be a more relatable for members than the uncertainty of the sports bar concept. Community certainly appears to serve as a convenient label to describe and categorize the interaction that takes place between dedicated Nucks Misconduct members, as well as a discursive strategy for determining inclusion and exclusion in the blog’s social world. The metaphor, however, does not adequately characterize social interaction on the blog. Rather, Nucks Misconduct demonstrates the fluid social characteristics of an electronic tribe in which members maintain varying degrees of commitment, regularly move in and out of its social world, and maintain a variety of social affiliations with other groups (Adams & Smith, 2008). These characteristics of Nucks Misconduct’s membership support Crawford’s (2004) argument that many sport fan cultures should be understood as neotribal, because this concept “recognizes the fluidity and often temporality of many contemporary communities, but identifies that these can still involve mechanisms and patterns of social inclusion and exclusion” (p. 62). The blog’s culture also reflects the broader destabilization of hockey’s historic cultural meaning at a time when many individuals are seeking neotribal social affiliations and hybrid, individualized identities (Wilson, 2006).

Conclusion

This article explores the social construction of one online sport fan culture and proposes that it is best understood as an electronic tribe. There is clearly a great deal more research that needs to be done to explore the social significance of online sport fan groups in diverse social contexts. Critical to future research in this area is attention to the ways in and extent to which social structures such as gender, race, class, and sexuality are reflected or challenged in various online fan cultures. Although this article delves somewhat into issues of gender within the Nucks Misconduct culture, it does not explore the significance of other intersecting identity categories such as class, race, or sexuality. These are critical areas that need sensitive and thorough exploration by scholars.

To add to the depth and nuance of research, future studies of online sport fandom may benefit from the inclusion of offline qualitative research in addition to the analysis of online social interaction. This is a concern for many Internet research projects, for as Wilson (2008) notes, many studies of online groups fail to “fully [attend] to the ways that Internet-associated experiences . . . inform and are related to the offline activities of these same members” (p. 140). This article certainly is guilty of this tendency, although it is my intention that my future research endeavors will delve into the complex intersections of online and offline sport fan identities and experiences—in the case of Nucks Misconduct, these intersections include the use of the blog to arrange meet-ups in cities around the world and the recent introduction of a line of Nucks Misconduct shirts, which feature fan created designs and inside references to aspects of the blog’s culture and which allow members to represent their participation in the online culture through their offline style choices.

Finally, it is critical that scholars continue to examine the possibilities and limitations for new media to enable resistance to the entrenched power structures and hegemonic social characteristics of sport cultures. This article suggests that, by throwing somewhat into flux established understandings of a sport, fan-based electronic tribes may be able to contribute to a modest renegotiation of the sport’s cultural meaning. However, it is important not to overstate this transformative potential, and I certainly do not intend to suggest that blogs or other new media can entirely dismantle the powerful ideologies and interests of mainstream sport—particularly when they are situated at corporate-controlled sites, such as SBN, that may have ulterior social and economic motivations. Furthermore, it is worth considering whether the very fluidity of electronic tribes means that they will have difficulty coalescing into sustained movements for social change. Nonetheless, exploring how new media may enable moments of resistance or force powerful interests to adapt their tactics will offer critical insights into the ways in which new technologies and media are affecting sport cultures. It is hoped that this article, despite only scratching the surface of such issues, is a small step in the ongoing exploration of online sport fan cultures and their broader sociopolitical implications.