Abstract
The title of this edited collection of contemporary research on the interrelationships between football, the media and fandom hints at the historical continuities of this particular aspect of popular culture that is characterized by ritualistic and tribal behaviour of predominantly young, male football supporters. As the editors of the collection, Roy Krøvel and Thore Roksvold, highlight such entrenched group rivalries have been mirrored by academic schools of thought on football fandom, which at times can obfuscate or bifurcate more open discussions and analysis of the sport and its followers. This collection attempts to introduce a wider set of dialogues to the field, specifically by focusing on the growing importance of the media in the representation and consumption of football. In many ways, the media are central to understanding contemporary football cultures, not least because the finances and governance of the sport are so enmeshed with its coverage on television, but also because the social and cultural identities associated with football are increasingly visible across all media in numerous narratives and genres including news reporting, documentaries, fictional accounts, autobiographical writing and all manner of socially networked media from YouTube to blogs, Twitter to Facebook. It is due to the rising mediation of football fandom that the editors note, ‘it is necessary to take time to reflect on the meanings of being a football fan and on how to understand mediated football’ (p. 12).
The collection of 15 chapters opens with two general essays: the first, by Hans K Hognestad, which pulls together recent thinking on ‘what is a football fan?’; the second is a more media-focused essay by Raymond Boyle that captures the zeitgeist of contemporary football culture which is riven with tensions around the impact of social media on both the practice of sports journalism and the online behaviour of players and fans alike. The remainder of the book is organized around three broad themes that capture the different dynamics of the interplay between football, the media and fans. The first, focusing on mediated fan culture in newspapers, draws on different national perspectives, using a range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives to interpret and understand the ways in which football supporters are represented in the media, both historically and during specific tournaments and events. For example, in his study of local newspapers in the Norwegian city Bergen, Peter Dahlén explores the secular ritual of mediated football by applying the theoretical models of religious historian Mircea Eliade to the context of the club Brann. Dahlén persuasively argues the case for understanding football through the language of myth and sacred places, in this case focused on the triumphalist narratives surrounding Brann’s Norwegian league championship in 2007. The ability for football to carry meaning for a community is also redolent in Hugh O’Donnell’s Foucauldian discourse analysis of Scottish football fans, commonly known as the ‘Tartan Army’. So strong is the connection of the term with Scottish football that its mythological status belies its relatively recent historical origins. O’Donnell uses a range of European newspaper coverage of Scotland fans to illustrate the different interpretations of domestic and European media which at times conflate the official Scottish national team with the unofficial Tartan Army. The chapter provides an excellent example of how media discourses on the same phenomena produce divergent meanings for different communities and readers, and that the ‘discourses of the Tartan Army are the evolving product of all those who reproduce them’ (p. 143). Other chapters in this section combine content analysis with more qualitative readings to provide both a longitudinal understanding of football journalism in Norway (Thore Roksvold), and a detailed study of the framing of football fans as consumers during the World Cup in 2010 (Rune Ottosen, Nathalie Hyde-Clarke and Toby Miller). Both, in their own way, conclude that commercialization and consumer culture have transformed the relationship between the media and the fans, possibly to the detriment of shared meanings about the social and communal aspects of football in popular culture.
The second main theme of the book focuses on the impact of digitalization, convergence and networked media on football subcultures. There are six chapters that analyse the overwhelming communicative power of the Internet that has opened new channels of communication for mediated fan culture. In turn, the chapters centre on issues of local rivalries and identities in Norway (Harold Hornmoen), violent masculinity and hooligan identities in Sweden (Aage Radmann), gender and femininity in online football forums (Deirdre Hynes), the changing nature of online sports journalism (Steen Steensen), banal football nationalism in blogging (Andreas Ytterstad) and ethno-cultural tensions and deliberations between Nordic sporting culture and Islamic footballers (Roy Krøvel). All of these chapters provide fascinating insights into the social construction of football fans in the media, emphasizing the importance of understanding the particular histories, cultural context and processes of mediation that frame how fans behave and create meaning through football and sport more generally.
The final theme of the collection looks at football and the moving image, particularly documentary film and television. Alina Bernstein, Lea Mandelzis and Inbar Shenhar critically analyse two documentaries that reveal the complex cultural politics of Israel’s minority Arab football community in a majority Jewish state. They argue that documentary film can mobilize football (and sport) to examine socio-national realities and conflicts in quite powerful, but also contradictory ways: where football is used as both a vehicle for change and for calming political sentiment. In her analysis of Swedish youth television Britt-Marie Ringfjord similarly concludes that mediated football constructs national ‘ideals for gender identities’ which are largely masculine, but may occasionally offer positive lifestyles and possibilities for both genders as it celebrates both the men’s and women’s game. Finally, David Rowe and Stephanie Alice Baker look at the formalization of live feeds from football mega-events, such as the World Cup, to explore the ways in which the mediated and embodied experience of watching football on a big screen in public places creates ‘new forms and experiences of sport fan sociality’ (p. 314).
In conclusion, this is a welcome collection to a larger body of research on football fandom, but with an important dynamic of understanding the mediated aspects of a complex global sociocultural phenomenon. The strength of the book lies not only in the inter- and intra-disciplinary nature of many of the studies, but also in its international dimension which enables the reader to compare and contrast fan cultures and their representation through different national frames. Indeed, the international nature suggests a need for more focused studies of this kind, particularly in parts of the world where the experience of mediated football is radically different, such as in many African nations, or where the global reach of heavily commercialized football, such as the English Premier League, is transforming mediated football fandom in quite dramatic ways, such as in South East Asia. Nevertheless, this book remains an excellent starting point for exploring these issues further.