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This study elucidates the concept of 'official', frequently used as a counterpart to fans in pop culture fandom using the case of Thai Boys Love drama fandom in Japan. It is necessary to examine the relationship between fandom and hegemony without assuming the potential of participatory culture and fandom as a counterculture. Therefore, this study focuses on how fans construct norms based on the concept of 'official' and internalise this power. Furthermore, it explores the meanings and respective boundaries of 'unofficial' and 'official' as constructed by fans. The results of the participation observations and interviews as an acafan revealed that the unofficial fan club, mass media and other entities were 'officialised' and the boundary between 'official' and unofficial was challenged by both fandom and the 'official' side. The mass media plays the role of the owner of cultural content and provider of norms, and fans expect each other to follow them through the constructed and ambiguous concept of 'official'. The hegemony of 'official' is constructed by the voluntary consent of fans, and internalising these hegemonies leads to self-censorship and self-regulation. Blind overconfidence in fan-created 'official' may reinforce these structures and undermine the freedom and independence of fans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selena Quintanilla, the Queen of Tejano Music, was gunned down by her fan club president on March 31, 1995. She was only twenty-three years old. She persists in public memory, resuscitated and resurrected in myriad ways. A short list includes the iconic film Selena (1997), the Netflix program Selena: The Series (2020), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. In addition, fans keep the singer's memory alive through impersonation acts, T-shirts, podcasts, Instagram accounts, annual concert events, and visits to commemorative locations associated with the star. This essay examines three memorial sites in Corpus Christi, Texas: the motel where Selena was murdered, the singer's grave in Seaside Memorial Park, and the Selena Memorial on the Corpus Christi bayfront. Bridging conversations in memory studies, scholarship on public memorials, considerations of celebrity status, and performance theory, I suggest that these places have performative potential that enables diverse groups to engage in creating specific temporary "communitas." I analyze the possibility of altered temporal perception at the motel, enactments of what I refer to as Latina mother-daughter pedagogies of postmemory at Selena's grave, and the expression of queer Latinx love at the singer's commemorative statue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Entomological Society of Victoria Council Meeting held on November 21, 2023, which discussed matters including promotions for society publications, succession planning, and financial matters. They agreed on offering a Christmas promotion for publications, scheduling future meetings with speakers, continuing with members forums, updating child safety instructions for events, and opening a CommBizz account for dual authorization of payments.

The current study focuses on identifying civic opportunities embedded in associational involvement in football fan clubs. The context of this research was confined to fan clubs affiliated with two German football teams (i.e. Hamburger SV and FC St. Pauli) located in close proximity yet revealing contrasting cultural traits. The methodology used followed the stages of critical ethnography to explore the dimensions of active engagement in football fan clubs. The results of the study indicate a within-group variation in the civic opportunity structure between the football fan clubs examined. Specifically, the degree to which each member develops social ties and acquires hard skills varies significantly. Such variation is facilitated by two conditions that underpin associational engagement within the fan clubs and identified by this study on a reactive/proactive and simple/complex value structure schema. The findings regarding the within-group variation and the conditions that facilitate such a variation provide an effective platform to assess civic opportunity structures of voluntary associations in sport fandom. While this study presents additional support to regard the within-group variation when assessing civic potential of voluntary associations, practitioners are encouraged to develop promotion and communication strategies to better target core fans that reflect level of engagement and value structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computers and the Internet have changed people's lifestyles, and the number of Internet users increases with the progress of Internet technology. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model for consumer behavior research and taking Coca-Cola's official fan club as an example, this study constructed independent variables, including message usefulness and message playfulness, and anticipated users' willingness to forward the messages and whether such willingness would be affected by how these messages are presented. This study conducted a questionnaire survey among 365 Facebook users and used regression analysis and two-way ANOVA to examine the related hypotheses. The findings are as follows: (1) Message usefulness has a positive correlation with message forwarding intention on Facebook. (2) Message playfulness has a positive correlation with message forwarding intention. (3) With high message practicality and interest, text added to audio and video has a more significant impact on the willingness to reproduce the message than other presentation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing visibility of male Asian Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters and the cultural affinity between martial arts and Asianness call for reassessment of dominant racial and gender stereotypes. This study examines online UFC fans' discursive formulation of four dominant scripts surrounding Asian masculinities and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting – the othering script, the inferior script, the martial artist script and the hypermasculine script – which contradict each other internally and externally with the cagefighting bodies of male Asian fighters. While fans often construct male fighters' Asianness as a source of athletic inferiority and otherness, they also celebrate these fighters' achievements to act upon UFC's hypermasculine script of MMA. The heteronormative underpinnings of these accounts, however, render the 'selective authorisation' of Asian masculinities problematic. A new conception of normative manhood independent of toxic hate, physical domination and heterosexuality is needed to envision genuine emancipation for marginalised and subordinated masculinities in sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the antecedents of brand passion and brand community commitment, namely, self-congruity and athlete attraction, as well as their effects on online brand advocacy in online brand communities. Design/methodology/approach: The sample comprises members of a Facebook football fan club brand community. An online survey measuring athlete-level factors, team-level factors and online brand advocacy provides data to test the conceptual framework using structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM). Findings: The findings of this paper support the positive spillover effect from athlete subbrand to team brand advocacy, as self-congruity exerted positive effects on brand passion and brand community commitment, while athlete attraction influenced brand community commitment, leading to online brand advocacy. Research limitations/implications: The findings validate the dimensions of online brand advocacy and advance research on sports brand hierarchy in brand architecture by establishing the transference effect from athlete to the team brand. Practical implications: To effectively manage their brands online, brand managers need to pay attention to the powerful and multifaceted tool of online brand advocacy. Brand managers can capitalize on their active advocates by working closely with them to co-create uplifting and authentic brand stories that are worthwhile for sharing, especially in times of crisis. Originality/value: Building on the developmental trajectory of brand love and vicarious brand experience, the findings verify the directionality of the spillover effect and offer insights into the development of brand advocacy across different brand levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market inefficiencies, known as Moneyball effect, have been recently documented in different sports and their scope largely remains an empirical question. This article focuses on football, where fans and club managers seem to value forwards more than defenders. Apparently, football rules imply equally important roles for goals scored and goals conceded in a team win. Economic theory in this case suggests that marginal returns on offensive and defensive efforts should be equal. This prediction can be potentially violated, resulting in labour market inefficiency. To test this hypothesis, we use two separate data sets at team-game and player-season levels (1224 and 772 observations, respectively) from two seasons (2017/18–2018/19) of the German Bundesliga. We compare the relative contribution of the offensive and defensive actions to a team win with the same relative contribution to players' market value and show that defensive actions are relatively underestimated by the market compared to the offensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Texto Livre / Texto Livre: Linguagem e Tecnologia is the property of Revista Texto Livre: Linguagem e Tecnologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the visual displays that football fans tend to organize during Israeli Football League team games. Topics explored include the use of visual elements ranging from banners to posters while cheering, the politicization of sports teams and fan organizations in Israel, and the identity and ideology of top Israeli fan organizations which may be observed through a variety of symbols displayed during games.

Caused by COVID-19 pandemic the last matches of the 2019/2020 season and almost all of the matches of the 2020/2021 season had to be played behind closed doors in the German Bundesliga. I ask which factors prevent football supporters from returning to the stadium after the COVID-19 pandemic? These questions are answered with the help of a quantitative survey among the supporters of a major Bundesliga club. This club has launched this survey among its club members, season ticket holders and fan club members from 26 March 2021to 11 April 2021. In total, 28,111 people completed the questionnaire. The analysis shows that the two factors of 'feeling at home before' and 'feeling at home during the COVID-19 pandemic' made fans want to return to the stadium. Fear of COVID-19 in general and a negative assessment of developments in football in general made supporters reluctant to come to the stadium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football fanzines once stood at the vanguard of fan activism. Historically, they have served as the voice of supporters, largely independent of the clubs they are associated with. Indeed, a recurring characteristic of these fanzines is that they often challenge and question authority. In the halcyon days of past decades, they proliferated and often acted as a powerful vector of change within football. Increasingly though, they have been pushed to the margins, for a number of reasons, ranging from the increasing digitalisation of media to the growing distance between fans and club owners as a consequence of the money that's now in the game. Football's inexorable drift towards deregulation means that fanzines alone can no longer act as agents of change and challenge. They need to work in synch with supporters' groups in order to make their voices heard. More than that, this needs to happen not just at a local, but a national level, so that supporters from top to bottom of English football's shaky pyramid are seen to speak with one voice. Perhaps above all, there is a need for independent regulation of the game's governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to investigate the validity and reliability of the scale structure in order to determine the suitability of the “Personal Reputation Scale”, which consists of 10 items and one dimension, developed by Hochwarter, Ferris, James, Zinko and Arnell (2007) in order to adapt it to Turkish. Thus, it is aimed to bring the personal reputation scale to the national literature. This scale is a measurement tool that reveals the holistic evaluations of the audience about the individual. A survey was conducted to comment the reputation of the chairman of the board of directors of 945 Fenerbahçe Sports Club fans who participated in the research. The translation-re-translation technique was applied during the translation of the personal reputation scale into Turkish. As a result of the explanatory factor analysis performed within the scope of validity, it was determined that there were 12 items and a one-dimensional measurement tool, which clarified 44% of the total variance, in line with the original scale. Consequently, confirmatory factor analysis, it was found that the model had acceptable fit values. The internal consistency reliability Cronbach Alpha value of the scale was 0,881, the AVE value was 0,880, and the CR value was 0,832. According to the analysis findings, it has been determined that the personal reputation scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool for research in the field of management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the social networking service (SNS) activities of professional football clubs have affected the quality of the relationship between clubs and fans during the period in which the COVID-19 pandemic caused limited fan service activities. This study selected a sample population of professional football fans, provided by football clubs, who were experienced in using SNSs. Data collected through convenience sampling using 215 questionnaires completed online by respondents were analyzed using frequency, exploratory factor, reliability, correlation, and multivariate regression analyses with SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 22.0. The study's findings are as follows: among the sub-factors of professional football clubs' SNS characteristics, interactivity and playfulness have a positive (+) effect on trust, a sub-factor of relationship quality, but information and recentness do not have a significant effect; interactivity, information, and playfulness have a positive (+) effect on immersion, a sub-factor of relationship quality, but recentness does not have a significant effect; and interactivity, information, playfulness, and recentness have a positive (+) effect on satisfaction, a sub-factor of relationship quality. This study provides practical and academic data useful for effective marketing activities by investigating how clubs' SNS marketing activities can help fans connect with them despite the limitations owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Correspondencias & Analisis is the property of Universidad de San Martin de Porres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Shanghai Physical Education Institute / Shanghai Tiyu Xueyuan Xuebao is the property of Shanghai Physical Education Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research question: Fans' perception that sponsors are a financial need illustrating the increased commercialisation in sports is not always aligned with their view of a club's culture. This perceived imbalance represents a challenge in the online marketing strategies of sports clubs. When club managers decide on the content of online social media posts/messages related to sponsors, they should be aware of potential fan reactions. Therefore, this study analyses how sponsor-related and other online social media communication of football clubs affect fan reactions. Research methods: We analyse Facebook postings (N = 4,603) published by German first division football clubs. After classifying postings regarding their content, we regress 'Reactions', 'Shares', and 'Angry' reactions on the content variable and further covariates. Linear regression models, Poisson regression models, and general dominance statistics are used for exploring variance within the data. Results and Findings: Fans react considerably angrier to sponsor-related posts than to other content except for defeat-related postings. Regarding overall reactions and shares, sponsor-related posts perform worst among different contents. In addition, the content of posts is elementary to negative reactions, but of less importance to overall reaction rates. Implications: Sports managers and sponsors should be aware of the potential negative shift in reactions when using clubs' social media channels to share sponsor-related content. We recommend releasing sponsor-related posts as videos on game days to decrease the fraction of negative responses and simultaneously maximise the overall reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this article is to present the history of Polish football fandom as a social process which has coincided with the processes of transformation of Polish society over the last few decades. The fan movement in Poland dates back to the early 1970s when the communist authorities attempted to channel the activity of supporters. The 1980s, however, brought the development of a spontaneous movement with strong accents of hooliganism. The post-1989 transformation led to an economic and social crisis, with the rule of anarchy in football stadiums. Along with the formation of the democratic order, the fan movement evolved into different sections focused on particular aspects of activity. The paper is also devoted to the ideological dimension of fan culture, related to the confict with the government at the turn of the 2010s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global soccer market has seen a growth in the professionalization of women's teams and as a result, spectatorship and fandom have augmented. Women's soccer was historically perceived as a taboo; however, stakeholder support has generated visibility and enhanced commercialization opportunities. The Football Association in England instituted the Women's Super League (hereafter WSL) during 2010, and the first season commenced in 2011 with eight teams. Subsequently, in 2021 there were 12 professional women's teams in the top-tier of the league and 11 teams in the championship. A qualitative case study approach is utilized, via the use of semi-structured interviews to explore the demographics and motives of women who watch soccer at the elite level and their socialization into fan communities. The study concludes by acquiring an understanding of the consumption of female soccer fans within the WSL and focuses upon the relationship between supporter clubs and fan socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to discuss the significance of Liverpool Football Club's (LFC) anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone' ('YNWA') for Swedish fans of LFC. The song has been played before home matches at the Anfield stadium since the 1960s, and via the media, it has spread all over the world. We can therefore talk about a kind of satellite supporters who can be involved no matter where in the world they are. Based on a survey conducted with help from Liverpool FC Official Supporters Club Sweden, 378 people (355 men and 23 women) answered questions about their relationship to the city of Liverpool and the Liverpool football team, how long they have been fans and why they chose LFC, and, finally, their connection to 'YNWA'. The results show that the Swedish fans feel a great sense of belonging to both the team and the city of Liverpool and that the song is very important to them even in everyday life. For the fans in the survey, 'YNWA' unites them with the team and fans from all over the world while separating themselves from other fans and football clubs with other anthems. The song thus becomes larger than itself. Identity and performances are important concepts on which the article is based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]