Doing digital football fandom

Doing digital football fandom

An ethnographic study of the mediatization and the digital

displacement of football fan culture

Author: Angelos Rouchotas

Supervisor: Martin Berg

Examiner: Sara Leckner

Media Technology: Strategic Media Development

Master Program Thesis, 15 credits, advanced level (ME620E)

Malmö University

Abstract

By applying ethnographic method this study sought to explore how football‟s

mediatization is inviting the digital displacement of fan culture by social media-based communities. It also aimed to understand how contemporary football fans engage online as part of identifying themselves as supporters of a football club. This research was motivated by the global resonance of fandom which is due to the media becoming part of the experience of being a fan, resulting to the formation of transnational communities. The two-way online communication has enabled supporting from afar, forming digital fans. Liverpool FC‟s Greek fans official group on Facebook was used as the case study for content analysis, along with in-depth interviews. The results have shown that social media have been the facilitators of football‟s mediatization, digitalizing fan habits that used to be parts of the social life. Self-identification as a fan has taken a much more cosmopolitan outlook, which prioritizes participation. The dimensions of participation are though mediatized, resulting to highly engaged communities regardless of locality. To deal with the redefinition of fandom expression, this thesis has contributed with an end-result protype of a service addressing the process of doing digital fandom. As media technology develops, football‟s mediatization will only exponentially increase and this study can offer insights to the better understanding of the different dimensions that digital fan culture adds to the sport.

Key words: fan culture, mediatization, social media, football, online fan communities, ethnography

Acknowledgments

Writing a thesis is not meant to be an easy task, but along the way people who really matter in your life stick around and they have their own share in the making of this project. First and foremost, I would like to thank my family. Without them this amazing journey would not have been possible and only I know how much I appreciate the chance they gave me to pursue my dreams. And where my family‟s guidance was not enough, I had my friends. They were always there for me in good and dark times, even if they might had been thousands of kilometers away in Greece or here in Malmö. I have to thank also my classmates for being a positive influence during this challenging year of my life and the participants of my research for sharing their stories with me. Last but far from least, my supervisor Martin, for his guidance, for believing in me and making me strive to achieve my personal best. It has been one hell of a ride and you all were part of it!

Table of contents

1. Introduction………...…………...… 1

1.1 Statement of the problem………..……… 2

1.2 Aim of the study……….... 4

1.3 Research Questions………... 5

2. Literature Review………... 6

2.1 Culture of mediatization………... 6

2.2 Mediatized fandom………. 14

2.3 Fan culture: then and now………... 16

2.4 Cosmopolitanization in football……….. 20

2.5 Conclusionof the theoretical background……….. 23

3. Methodology……….... 26

3.1 Content analysis……….. 28

3.2 Semi-structured interviews………. 31

3.3 Analysis………... 32

3.4 Sampling and participants………... 34

3.5 Ethical considerations………. 36

3.6 Limitations……….. 37

4. Findings……… 40

4.1 Being a digital fan………... 41

4.2 Becoming a digital fan……… 47

4.3 Mediatized socialities………... 56

4.3.2 Coming together: „online pub‟ discussion………... 60

4.3.3 Polls, Games & Interaction……….. 68

4.3.4 Mediatization connecting fans………. 73

4.4 Summarizing the findings ……….. 77

5. Discussion………...………. 79

5.1 Metaprocess of doing digital fandom………. 80

5.2 Digital fan culture………... 83

5.3 Connecting the digital fans………. 85

6. Prototype………...………... 88

6.1 Inspiration………... 88

6.2 Ideation………... 89

6.3 Implementation………... 92

6.4 Evaluation and possible future improvements……… 95

7. Conclusion………...……… 98

7.1 Contribution……….... 98

7.2 Recommendations for future research……… 99

References………...……… 101

Appendix I: Interview questions……….………....……….... 110

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1. Introduction

Two English clubs competing for the most prestigious European football trophy in a newly build, super modern stadium at Madrid. In the meantime, tensions are building as the kick-off of the match approaches at a distant newspaper‟s offices in Athens. “Since when are you supporting them? You are just a bandwagon fan, because they are on a winning run”. “We are the most successful English club, you are just jealous”. The feeling of supporting and being a fan is profound among the people at the office. Most of the them have chosen sides, identifying themselves as fans of either of the finalists. A few are watching without taking sides. Meanwhile another “match” is going on, on social media. Only a few thousands of their fans will watch the final from close, but millions are scattered around the world. England may be their home, but football is a globally mediatized product. Back in Athens, the final has started and only in the second minute a penalty has been awarded. An Egyptian that fans have given the nickname “King” converts it and a late second goal from a Belgian with Kenyan roots determines the winner. While journalistically covering the match, the celebrations have already started at the office. After many years, it is time for Liverpool FC fans to celebrate. No matter the place. “I can‟t bear the deluded Greek Liverpool fans

celebrating on Facebook”, a colleague admits. Fans watching matches, discussing them and celebrating in a common pattern; digitally. This is mediatized football.

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1.1 Statement of the problem

There are estimated 3.5 billion football fans around the world (Das, 2020). That means one in every two people in the world considers themselves a fan. But what is the value, the element that qualifies someone as a fan? A football fan could be such a diverge social group; someone that owns a season ticket, one that watches matches on TV or someone who buys a jersey and follows a club on Facebook, despite living on the other side of the world. The definition varies as the characteristics are too broad and that is because social media and the TV rights have made football a global game.

The match that is described in the anecdote was no other than the 2019 UEFA Champions League final between Tottenham Hotspur FC and Liverpool FC. The final took place at Wanda Metropolitano Stadium at Madrid, with a sold-out attendance of 68.000. This means that the majority of the viewers had to watch the game through other means: the media. Whether it was a pub‟s screen, a home television or a laptop, the experience of a football game through media is something entirely different. However, the sport is not only viewed through the media, as the media have ultimately become part of the experience for the viewer, resulting to the digital displacement of football fandom. Lawrence and Crawford (2018) point out the change to the nature of the game which they attribute to its hypercommodification and commercialization as a product. Referring to fandom though, those factors need be to contextualized as parts of the bigger picture: the mediatization of football (Hepp & Tribe, 2013).

The media are no longer intruders to the romantic perception of what the “beautiful game” has become. The boom of social media had as a result the exponential

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opportunities the online platforms provide. The attraction of socially diverge audiences as fans, created communities that surpass the national borders and which identify

themselves thanks to their support for a specific club. The ecosystem of connective media has transformed the way fans take in football and more importantly have made the

imagined communities a concrete part of contemporary fan culture.

In this study the term “transnational” is used to describe the fans that support a club of a third locality. The term is used following Hannerz's (1996, p.6) interpretation, who states that it portrays “any process or relationship that somehow crosses the state boundaries”. Transnational is a humbler way to approach globalization and a more accurate label for variable phenomena that share the characteristic of not being

constrained to the nation. Accordingly, the fans are not labeled as “international” as they are not approached in the strict sense of nations.

While building their transnational image, European clubs still need to preserve a strong urban community identity both in social and cultural level, as it is what makes them unique (Kennedy & Collins, 2006). For the fans, clubs were always an integral part of their personal identity, extending to social and familial relationships, creating a feeling of community. The extended, online community adds though a completely different layer to fan culture, one that is not based in traditional ties of locality. By expressing

themselves in online communities, fans take part, identifying themselves as supporters even if they have never set foot at their club‟s home stadium. The global resonance of fandom, as part of football‟s mediatization, is causing a social fragmentation which has digitalized fan culture.

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1.2 Aim of the study

This study follows an ethnographic approach with the purpose to discuss the role of football‟s mediazation in the digital displacement of football fandom. Secondly, it attempts to understand how contemporary football fans use the two-way online communication in the process of identifying themselves as supporters of a club. The outcome of the research leads to the design of a prototype which is redefining the digital expression of football fandom comparing to how it was used to be done on social media.

Research around social media and football is mainly focusing on the marketing aspect of clubs acting as brands, trying to gain financially as much as possible from

mediatization. Judging though from a stadium‟s stands, football is a cultural product in which audience had always been an integral part of the experience. In contrast to what has been previously attempted in the academic field, the aim is not to draw dichotomies between “authentic” and “inauthentic” fandom. Rather, it is to frame the digital football supporter.

Following Beck‟s (2006) description of cosmopolitanization, clubs are thought as cultural institutions around which wider and non-geographical communities are formulated through media outlets. The focus is on these online communities of fans. Throughout this study it is attempted to disclose how people replace the offline

traditional ways of support with mediatized practices, how they engage from distance and build this remote relationship both with the clubs and other fans.

Thus, this project attempts to add to previous research by employing a qualitative, ethnographic approach on the subject under study. Since transnational fans are constrained to support from afar because of the geographical distance, the goal of this

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work is to provide understanding on the way social media come into play in the process of doing digital football fandom.

1.3 Research Questions

Following the argumentation in the aim of the study, the main research question is: RQ1: How is football‟s mediatization inviting the displacement of fan culture by social media-based communities?

The present work also intends to address the sub-question:

RQ2: How do contemporary football fans engage online as part of identifying themselves as supporters of a club?

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2. Literature Review

This literature review is an attempt to position fans in the era of mediatized football. The most relevant theoretical and empirical research to the research question is presented, in order to guide the reader for a better understanding of the terminology used in the present study. Most of theoretical work done related to this topic, is taking the

institutional perspective investigating from the club‟s perspective. Nevertheless, it can be proven fruitful to follow the opposite direction for operationalizing the concept. Football is the people‟s game. And it only serves it right to contextualize its mediatization bearing that in mind.

The review of the theoretical background starts with a description of the main concept of this project, mediatization, and its contextualization in football. Then the term is applied to explain the phenomenon of mediatized fandom, leading to a further analysis of the football fan culture. Finally, the concept of cosmopolitanism is introduced through the lens of submitting football fandom to the media logic.

2.1 Culture of mediatization

Thinking of football as a cultural product, mediatization of society has inevitably left its mark on it. Its mediatization can be parallelized with the one of music. As Lundberg, Malm and Ronström (2000, p.66) describe it: “mediatization means that a form of music in different ways is altered by and adapted to the media system”. The point of interest is not only on how music sounds, but also on practices related to appearance, use and functions. Core elements that have been altered respectively in football. In order to

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understand therefore the changes that the sport has gone through the last decades, it is necessary to analyze the culture of mediatization. Culture was always a matter of practice and production of everyday meanings. Hall (2001) describes it as a sum of different classificatory systems and discursive formations. “Doing” is essential for the production of meanings, so it is embedded is the process of social discussion.

Culture‟s mediatization is a multilayered phenomenon. For Hjarvard mediatization is “the process whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes

dependent on, the media and their logic. This process is characterized by a duality in that the media have become integrated into the operations of other social institutions, while they also have acquired the status of social institutions in their own right” (2008, p. 113). This requires that the entity that is mediatized was not created by the media. The media need to have developed their own institution, operating independently from others. It is a process through which an institution that is not dependable of the media, becomes subject to it.

In football both of those conditions can be found. Because of the television, the game has been moved from the traditional matches on Saturday afternoons, across the weekend or even in hours that fit more audiences in the other side of the world. Spanish La Liga‟s games played early in the afternoon are serving exactly that reason as they are being broadcasted in TV prime time for China. Many are also the cases were the media exist for themselves, as much as they exist for reporting football. Returning to last year‟s

Champions League final, the pitch invasion of the model Kinsey Wolanski, wearing a swimsuit and interrupting the match, was an unfortunate incident which the media celebrated. Wolanski‟s Instagram followers sky-rocketed from 230,000 to over two

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million after her stunt (Whaling, 2019). Both she and the media were benefited from an incident happening during a football match, but which had nothing to actually do with it.

These results of mediatization are not part of a mass culture or a culture that is

dominated by a particular medium. For Kellner (2012) media culture cannot be detached from people‟s lives, as society and culture are colonized by media culture. This leaves individuality dependable on the acquisition of normalized media contents that become the basis of the articulation of one‟s identity. Nevertheless changes in media do not have a direct impact upon everyday life, rather they alter informational networks, role

relationships and human group identities (Hepp & Tribe, 2013).

Contextualizing this into fan culture, the upsurge of social media may has influenced the commutation patterns, created new online relationships and group dynamics, but it did not actually alter the individual fan‟s life. The fans continue to attend their teams‟ matches but now a new layer has been added to the fan experience because of the media culture. According to the medium theory, the focus in the search for the identification of the media effect should not be on the media contents, rather than the nature and the capacities of each medium itself (Meyrowitz, 2009). Football fan communities are prospering mainly in Social Networking Sites (SNS), like Facebook. Digging into the Facebook‟s nature, Ellison et al. (2007, p.111) note that SNS consist of “web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system”.

Social networking sites are designed with the purpose to provoke social interaction in the online environment. As Sheldon (2008) describes, their main goal is to create new

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friendships or to empower those which already existed in the offline world. An SNS profile is then not a static entity, but the social interaction reflects various dynamics within social networks and communities (Tufekci, 2008). This is achieved technically through Facebook groups, a function within the platform. People with a certain (or multiple) common interests gather -by joining the group- and discuss relevant matters. In the era of mediatized football, this kind of social interaction has become central for football fans. In addition to Facebook‟s features, Facebook Groups include much more “useful and fun enhancements” for their users (Park, Kee, & Valenzuela, 2009). There is the possibility to post content, such as video, photos and texts, but also create polls and start online conversations between people who may not know each other offline, or may even come from different parts of the world, but their common interest brings them together in discussion forums and threads (Park et al., 2009). Participants in Facebook groups form communities in which they share information, knowledge and experiences by interacting with each other (Sjöberg & Lindgren, 2017)

Media-based communication using writing allows the construction of this apparatus of rule through the creation of a “super local communicative network”. This makes possible the identification of local groups as parts of larger communities. Looking at the matter of locality, as a part of the medium theory, Tenbruck (1989) indicates that it creates

opportunities for translocal connectivity because of the formation of networks.

Social media are providing the opportunity to bring people together, independently of their locality, into new (possibly passive or transitory) groups integrating them into the movement of society. Global Climate Strike is a vivid recent example of activism on transnational level with 16-year-old Swedish Greta Thunberg being the face of the

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campaign. As Guardian (Belam, 2019) reports, she was inspired for her school strikes by US students who staged walkouts to demand better gun controls in response to multiple school shootings. Thunberg was influenced by something happening on the other side of the planet as social media operated as the essential channel. With her turn, her own activist action was communicated globally and went viral through the same channel. Those are indications of a certain power shift in the way people perceive activism and the meaning of mediatized participation.

Schulz (2004) thinks of mediatization as an analytic concept and distinguishes four aspects of it; extension, substitution, amalgamation and accommodation. Extension refers to the possibilities of human communicative action that have increased with time thanks to media, allowing communication to take place over larger physical places, or even making them irrelevant. Substitution describes that media replaced social activities or face-to-face interactions. Amalgamation is the blurring between actions that are related to media and those that are not. Finally, accommodation is the orientation of multiple aspects of social life towards the media logic. Media logic indicates the process through which media present and transmit information. Media communication is a processual framework through which social action occurs.

This theoretical analysis of mediatization can find perfect implementation in contemporary football fandom. Supporters have the possibility to communicate and organize in much easier and costless ways thanks to social media (extension).

Organization no longer requires huge costs and it can happen in no time, comparing to traditional ways. Substitution is vastly present in mediatized football fandom, as people tend to watch matches from afar and discuss matters of their team through online based

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communities. Even attending a match at the stadium can be highly mediatized, as they act as theme parks providing services like management of hotel access, park admissions, purchases and other digital touch points. The border between the media and non-media related actions is becoming smaller and smaller (amalgamation), guided by a media logic which is applied to social aspects of life. The video game FIFA is a simulation football game that has been recognized even from professionals as a direct influence to the actual game. In 2008 the Italian goalkeeper Marco Amelia, after saving a penalty from AC Milan‟s Ronaldinho, said that: “It was just like playing against him on PlayStation - he had the same run-up. It was very strange” (Parkin, 2016).

Media and sport are intertwined through the prism of media shaping particular sports rules, scheduling, business models and the emergence of teams and players with global reach (accommodation). In the same time the media shape themselves in a way that accommodates the sport events, by developing adequate facilities and styles of reporting. Looking to accommodation from a bottom-up perspective though, it can be argued that mediated football knowledge has turned to a skill that has value amongst the fans (Skey et al., 2018). It is considered a competency to be able to find your way through complex media environments in order to access particular content related to favorite teams or players. Accommodation is mostly based on economics and is the most obvious influence on the mediatized football, but all four aspects have their impact on it and how

contemporary fans perceive it. As mediatization progresses according to Hjarvard‟s (2013) description, the more profound Schulz‟ (2004) four elements become.

However, Hjarvard distinguishes his theorization for mediatization from Schulz‟s, as he uses the concept to refer to particular forms of institutionalization of the media.

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Society becomes increasingly dependent of the media logic, as they have integrated the operations of other social institutions. Furthermore, they have already achieved the status of social institutions themselves. He defines direct mediatization as actions mediated by media and indirect those which have been influenced by symbols or specific mechanisms by media. Examples of this would be spectators using social media to discuss an incident while attending a live match or non-professional players incorporating elements like attire, goal celebration from the professional game. Sometimes direct and indirect mediatization may appear together. Football may be mediatized as a TV program, but in the same time it continues to be played at any pitch by non-professionals. However, it is staged differently by the media.

It is important to note that mediatization is a metaprocess, not an event (Krotz, 2001). According to Krotz (2009), a metaprocess is a conceptual construction which is used to deal with the generalized process of change. He notes it has a long-term influence upon the social and cultural development of humanity. Globalization as an element of the ongoing increase of connectivity and commercialization, are major metaprocesses that interrelate with mediatization. Numerato and Giulianotti (2017) indicate them, along with postmodernization, as the processes which affected most football‟s transformation since the late 1980s: the era when the TV broadcasts were introduced in a steady base. Of course, some football actors, clubs like FC Barcelona or Juventus, might be in a different phase of mediatization than others, like RCD Espanyol or Torino FC. The process is not linear and some leagues are more mediatized than others.

Although differences in the level of mediatization exist, it is undeniable that these changes are tied to the digitization which society has gone through. Van Dijck, Poell and

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De Waal (2018) theorize this as platform society. A term which underlines the inextricable relation between online platforms and societal structures. While Castells (2004, p. xvii) refers to it as network society: “the social structure that results from interaction between social organization, social change and a technological paradigm constituted around digital information and communication technologies”.

In this sense, metaprocesses are panoramas of comprehensive processes of change (Hepp & Tribe, 2013). Internet is the medium that has made possible the unhampered continuous flow of information without taking into consideration the geographical

restrictions. The locations have turned into media locations. As far as the sociality aspect, it is bridging the public and private spheres as social relations are influenced by

technologically mediated communication.

The new infrastructure that has emerged contains few large and many small players who constitute an ecosystem of connective media (Van Dijck, 2013). In this case the clubs are the big hubs and their fans, local and international, are the peers that create this network. European clubs have a strong relationship with their local communities, one which has implications in all their operations, including marketing strategies (Parganas et al., 2017). Social media may provide easiness of access for the users, but their ultimate goal is profit generation through the exploitation of users‟ data (Fuchs, 2014).

Considering that football clubs are big corporations that are ultimately targeting profits, they are utilizing all the possibilities that the medium is providing.

Football is increasingly submitting to logics of mediatization, while in the same time football media themselves tend to become more important than the actual outcome of matches. Within this process of mediatization many social dimensions exist, playing their

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part in the long-term view of the changes the game is undergoing. Considering

mediatization as a process which demands time, it becomes clearer how fans relate to the sport nowadays. While clubs align themselves though with the media logic, lurks the danger of deterritorialization which weakens spatial connections of cultural practices, identity, products, and communities (Lawrence & Crawford, 2018). Making the sport a mean of expression of global culture diminishes the local affiliation and feeling of belonging. Thus, understanding contemporary fan culture is the next logical step in order to perceive what mediatized football entails.

2.2 Mediatized Fandom

Bourdieu (1978) critically describes sports spectators as “illusory participants”, but football fandom should be interpreted in multiple levels as it always had been a class struggle and a production of identities and communities. Due to mediatization, football fans too are becoming increasingly globally scattered. The aggressive promotion of European top leagues has led to the creation of fan groups in “non-significant” football nations, like the Asian market. Television was of course the medium that made football accessible to fans geographically remote. But with the classic media “audiences [were] situated on the receiving end of a one-way communication process” (Sandvoss, 2003, p. 150). Although they had access to information, they were isolated by the greater culture that surrounds football. As Sandvoss highlights, these communities were unmoored from any physical space and were constituted through their interactions with the media. He mentions example of Norwegian Chelsea fans, who were interacting with other Norwegian fans of English teams. However, there was no reference of these

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deterritorilized fans interacting with fans from other countries or the country that their team originated from.

Another approach, adding to the knowledge about mediatized fandom, is Guschwan's (2016) study on online fandom. Especially on how actual and imagined communities contribute to the creation of fan culture and a wider community. He focuses his interest on studying a website which fans of AS Roma use in conjunction to their stadium meetings. The results present that the site acts as a bridge between the local and the global fans, a facilitator of sociality. Overall, it is a continuity of the offline, traditional fan club and more inclusively, a mediator of the spirit of AS Roma.

The enhanced contemporary mobilities of fandom is also the point where Rowe (2015) focuses in order to address the interrelations between sport, media, identity and national cultural citizenship in his empirical research in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. The interviews and the focus groups conducted, depict fans who rarely attend the matches. On the contrary, there is an increasing sense of transnationalism, as it is effortless to range across national borders, by following teams and athletes online. Following a similar ethnographic approach, Sayan and Aksan (2020) study the virtual extensions of football terraces. They examine the practices of the online fan forum Ali-Sami-Yen.net, a forum of Turkish football club‟s Galatasaray fans. They come to the conclusion that the digital settings have a growing role as an extension of the traditional fan practices. Moreover, they act as a way to counter government‟s control, while extending the duration of fan interaction.

The emergence of the Internet and of course the social media was crucial for the creation of interpersonal relationships between fans in bulletin boards, newsgroups or

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Internet discussion sites (Crawford, 2004). People started using the media not only to get information, but also to interact with other fans of their team from distant places. Online communication became a mean of showing solidarity with their club, proving that the two-way communication brings the members of these communities together, allowing them to get in touch with each other. The “imagined community” of football fandom is no longer in the sphere of imagination. Because of the social media it becomes a concrete experience (Hjarvard, 2008). The classic media may still have an hegemonic position, but they have competition from fan motivated initiatives, like podcasts or web sites. This is the reason why the internet as a medium has complicated the traditional distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” fans. This aspect of football‟s mediatization, related to fan culture needs to be further examined.

2.3 Fan culture: then and now

Starting from the early days and the traditional fans, Critcher (1979) describes them as self-declared club members with a participatory democratic feeling. On the contrary, he pictures customers of the clubs as consumers who firstly calculate the personal benefits of their involvement. Giulianotti (2002) builds on Critcher‟s definition of the traditional supporter to classify the contemporary into four categories: supporters, fans, followers and flaneur. Two basic oppositions exist: the hot-cool and traditional-consumer. The traditional/hot spectators are the supporters, people who maintain a long-term personal and emotional investment with the club. Bale (1994) characterizes “topophilic” the close relationship they have with the club‟s spaces.

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The followers are the traditional/cool spectators. They follow the club's developments but while keeping their distance, making mostly their presence felt through social media. Jenkins (2008) sees online fan communities as a step forward to a more meaningful fan culture, which makes fans more interested and active. However Fuchs (2014) retains a skeptical stance, highlighting that fans‟ ideas are not necessarily progressive, but can also be close to extremist ideologies like some fascist ultras groups that act as hooligans. The fans have the position of hot/consumer in Giulianotti‟s (2002) model. Those are mostly fans of specific players, particularly the celebrities who have strong presence on social media. The relationship with the club is thin and it is highly market- centered.

Flaneur is even more market-connected with the club (Giulianotti, 2002). Especially chooses to interact through the cool media as television and the Internet. “The ease of joining and leaving polycentric (multi-hubbed) issue networks means that it becomes difficult to control campaigns or to achieve coherent collective identity frames” (Bennett, 2003, p. 145). Social media provide the perfect environment for this type of fandom. Flaneur‟s thin solidarity makes it more possible to participate in online chat discussions on forums without any affiliation to any club‟s fan base (Krøvel & Roksvold, 2012). However Stone (2007) argues that Giulianotti‟s description of the flaneur is too rigid and that in the ever-changing modern world, there are unlimited opportunities for

engagement.

Mostly because of the fan-controlled media, Giulianotti‟ taxonomy in disrupted. In his model the traditional “supporter” is seen as someone who does not use at all media in favor of “a long-term personal and emotional investment in the club” (Giulianotti, 2002, p. 33) which is based on physical presence. Giulianotti is critical about the type of flaneur

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fan, as he argues that “if supporters become flaneurs, then the spectacle that is created by the spectators themselves will be threatened” (Giulianotti, 2002, p. 42). Also the ideal supporter is not a consumer and only they can be seen as an authentic football spectator, comparing to followers who are not strongly connected with their club, fans who are keen on liking celebrities and flaneur who are dependable on the media. This categorization is driven from the idea the game has lost its “soul” because of the commercialization and it leads to the assumption that traditional fans can only be labeled as authentic and

accordingly modern as inauthentic.

This distinction though is far from depicting the reality of mediatized football. The ultras of the most successful club in Greece, Olympiacos FC -called “Gate 7”- have their own official Facebook page. Although they take pride of their topophilic relationship with the club‟s spaces and their traditional way of supporting, they tend to post videos, photos, announcements and organize through their page. Even the ultras opinion for sporting matters of the teams is expressed there, as it acts as an unframed channel of communication with the wider masses of Olympiacos fans.

Hewer et al. (2017) study a similar ultras style-fan group, the Celtics‟ “Green Brigade”. Using netnography they analyze how a traditional group of fans uses social media as the medium to communicate their opposition to the clubs‟ economics, branding and marketing strategies. A counter-brand community is acting through a medium which is accused for the commodification of the sport; it is obvious that the categorization of fans cannot be rigid. Gibbons and Nuttall (2016) research agrees with this argument, as it tries to evaluate the trustworthiness of the academic typologies of fandom regarding „authenticity‟. With quantitative approach, using the views of fans of English non-league

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clubs, they come to the conclusion that such categorizations are lacking accuracy. The dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding (Elias, 1978). From a more data-driven perspective, Pacheco et al. (2017) attempt a categorization of online fans‟ behaviors according to their activity on Twitter. To do that they rank clubs in Brazil and England by popularity and in the same time they identify rivalries between clubs and supporters. They achieve a more dynamic alternative outlook, comparing to standardized polls, as they aim their work at discovering meaningful relationships.

Crawford (2004) also believes that the academics‟ distinction between “fans” and “consumers” serves their intent to legitimize the dichotomy between “authentic” and “resistant”. Considering fans as simple customers is not the case as they attach personal emotional value in the product (Keller, 1993). A representative example is Numerato and Giulianotti‟s (2018) introduction of the term “citimer” (combining citizen & consumer) to analyze the connections of market and political identity in fan cultures. “In football, citimers are interested in shaping the game‟s contemporary culture and critically engaging with the very logic of consumption, from which, within an increasingly commodified sport that operates across neoliberal societies” (Numerato & Giulianotti, 2018, p.343). The citimer can be made both from below and above, resembling to the term of “prosumer” that Fuchs (2014) uses to describe the blurring line between the producer and the consumer in a datafied environment. The market logic is rearticulating the citimer‟s behavior as a citizen, in a similar way social media‟s participatory culture alter users‟ tendency to share more, to get the feeling of being active. However, limiting fans who are not following the accepted pattern of “authentic” fandom to new middle-class consumers of football is problematic (Wagg, 2004).

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“Many habits that have been permeated by social media platforms used to be informal and ephermal manifestations of social life” (Van Dijck, 2013, p.6). The new types of fan culture and modes of spectatorship is a logical continuation of the changes in the nature of media coverage. It is not that people changed their behaviors, needs and impulsions because of the transformation of the public sphere – at least in the way it was theorized by Habermas (Fuchs, 2014). The user‟s needs are those which define the social media. In the case of this thesis, the traditional “need” of football fans to express themselves. An act that used to be strictly tied to geographical space, characterizing accordingly the fan according to their practices. Nevertheless, mediatization of football made the

dichotomization between “inauthentic” and “traditional” fans irrelevant. The new societal configurations are molding accordingly the contemporary fan culture, which is heavily influenced by the media logic. Since it is unnecessary to draw the line between authentic and inauthentic fans, it may prove to be beneficial to theorize contemporary fans as parts of the cosmopolitanization of the society.

2.4 Cosmopolitanization in football

Cosmopolitanism is becoming a defining feature of the new era in which national borders and differences are blurring and need to be renegotiated through a cosmopolitan outlook which captures the contemporary social and political realities (Beck, 2006). Cultural contradictions are becoming less and less evident, increasing the possibility of a life under conditions of cultural mixture. The mass media have changed drastically all kinds of transnational connections and the result is that cultural ties and identities have

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expanded beyond systems of control. It is interpreted as “a multidimensional process which has changed the historical nature of social worlds” (Beck, 2006, p.9).

Glocalization is a term similar to cosmopolitanisation that Giulianotti and Robertson (2004) use to describe how local cultures adapt and redefine any global cultural product to suit their needs, beliefs and customs. Cosmopolitanism entails greater flexibility between traditions and identities, contributing to the cultural relativization and

glocalization. Its incorporation in every as aspect of life and of course culture, is strongly connected to the mediatization of football.

The internet as a medium has allowed people to enact their rituals as supporters from afar and foster their sense of belonging to a wider club culture. This cosmopolitan perception of fandom is a logical consequence of a mediatized product. By following the club‟s culture, even from distance, the supporters develop a feeling of belonging to something wider as an imagined community (Anderson, 2006). These mediated socializations create the feeling of an ever-present community. Of course, to foster the feeling of being and becoming a fan, having the club‟s merchandise is also of big importance. This is why cosmopolitanism in football is unavoidably related to its commodification.

Giulianotti and Finn (1999) point at Glasgow Celtic as an early example of a transnational football club. The Irish and Catholic background of the club seems incompatible with the Scottish identity. But being by definition an example of the football diaspora is not enough marketing-wise for Celtic, that are trying to market themselves as a modern transnational club, in order to attract their share from the global fans. The transnational dimension of the football industry has as a result fans to abandon

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their local teams, for the more glamourous that have greater exposure in the media. Alternatively, this leads to dual support, both for a local and a bigger glamorous club, which is participating in another league.

Transnational corporations (like athletic equipment providers) play an important role in the glocalization of the sport, as they use marketing techniques that appeal to particular consumer cultures. The glocalization or micromarketing of sport merchandise is done through the use of local symbols in order to appeal to appeal to particular cultures of the customer (Robertson, 1992). Clubs have global communities of supporters that highlight the deterritorialized kinds of glocality that exist among the international communities of followers of a popular culture. Giulianotti and Robertson (2004) call those communities “self-inverted virtual diasporas”, as the individuals self-identify themselves with club-related symbols and practices. This is one of the main reasons the differentiation between “us” and „them‟ is becoming smaller. For example, the European champions Liverpool FC‟s slogan “We are Liverpool, this means more” started as a marketing strategy used by New Balance. It became a huge success because it encapsulates the cosmopolitan feeling of inclusive differentiation (Beck, 2006). The blurring boundaries between internal and external are also obvious in the case of Bayern Munich, whose moto is “mir san mir”. In the Bavarian dialect is translates as „we are who we are‟ and it is used as a proud

statement from the club‟s supporters that are not even German so as to depict the proudness about what the club represents.

Furthermore, Liverpool fans from all over the world call themselves “scousers”, a term which is originally used to describe residents of the Merseyside area. The

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fan culture, as it resembles the mediatization of human relationships in the sense of belonging to a community.

Signs of cosmopolitanization because of such practices can be found all over contemporary football, Petersen-Wagner (2015) developed a model in order to apply Beck's (2006) theory of cosmopolitanization in the fan culture context. Beck (2006) proposes a set of indicators for exploring cosmopolitanization in everyday life, based on categories as the movement of goods and individuals, channels of communication, identities and forms of transnational life. In his study about transnational fans Petersen-Wagner (2015) uses his perception about indicators of football fandom

cosmopolitanization, looking on how people construct their own inverted biographies of their fandom. National identities, levels of activity of transnational organizations, political intensities and dual citizenship is the first theme of indicators which attempt to position fans regarding political cosmopolitanization. The commercial side of football is examined through flows of communication, transnational reporting and import / export of cultural goods. Finally, language, mobility, transnational forms of life and travel indicate the cosmopolitanization of fan rituals. This model serves the purpose of extracting qualitative results on fandom and it differs from the classic distinction between authentic and inauthentic fans, by applying the cosmopolitanization concept in fan culture.

2.5 Conclusion of the theoretical background

The “beautiful game” of football has been increasingly transformed by the media. Conn (2002, p. 301) says that “things of beauty need careful preservation, not

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remorseless exploitation, […] sport has a soul and football the heartiest of all”. It can be argued that the changes it is undergoing are due to the culture of mediatization, as

described by Hepp and Tribe, Hjarvard and Schulz. Media are becoming an institution of their own, replacing the experience of football as it traditionally was and submitting it to the media logic. This has its effect on fan culture, since social media are acting as the medium which turns the imaginary transnational fan communities to important actors of the contemporary sport. Mediatization as a metaprocess is analyzed by Schulz‟s four aspects, that highlight the fact that the line between media and non-media related actions is blurring within the sport. This is deemed as a reason for weakening the fans‟

connection with their clubs, as themselves are part of the mediatized logic. Two-way communication process that social media made possible, altered for good the classic perception about distincting the fans between authentic and inauthentic.

Although Giulianotti‟s taxonomy of fandom puts a certain basis to the categorization, it is driven by the idolization of the “soul” of the sport which is threatened because of the hypercommodification. Mediatized football adds multiple layers in what a contemporary football fan can possible be in the same time. However, fan culture is not independent, rather it has been influenced by the wider societal configurations that are attributed to the media logic.

Beck‟s theory of cosmopolitanization finds adequate application on the conformation of contemporary fan culture. It depicts a fan that has a cosmopolitan outlook for things and easily embraces cultural ties and identities. A different scope of theorizing digital fandom, not according to faithfulness to the club, but through the lens of mediatization.

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Comparing to the approaches followed in previous researches, this study emphasizes in the understanding of digital football fan culture, its practices and how mediatization leads ultimately to the formation of wider fan communities. Namely, it looks into the representations of digital fandom, the role media have in the making of one and the mediatization of socialities for a transnational fan. I aspire to achieve these goals by embracing the qualities of the ethnographic method, in order to contribute to the existing knowledge in the field. More extensively the methodology is discussed in the following chapter.

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3. Methodology

In the methodology section I explain the process implemented in the study, including the research design, the analysis and the outcomes of my experience in the fieldwork. Also, the sampling and the choosing of the participants is described, as well as the ethical considerations and the limitations that were necessary to take into account while

conducting this study.

This thesis tries to explore the role of football‟s mediazation in the digital

displacement of football fandom and analyze how fans in online communities engage in supporting their clubs. Liverpool FC supporters‟ group in Greece is used as a case study, in order to encapsulate the phenomenon of doing digital fandom. Supporting a club from another country in a cosmopolitan fashion is very common in the contemporary era of football. People identify themselves as fans of certain clubs as the mediatization of the sport has made it possible to support from afar. However, this does not seem in line with the traditional football fan culture. Thus, the main focus of this project is to examine how Greek fans of Liverpool FC replace the offline traditional ways of support with digital practices, how they engage from distance and build this wide community.

The most adequate approach to study the expression of fandom on social media is ethnography. Ethnography is “iterative-inductive research, drawing on a family of methods, involving direct and sustained contact human agents, within the context of their daily lives (and cultures), watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking

questions, and producing a richly written account that respects the irreducibility of human experience, that acknowledges the role of theory, as well as the researcher‟s own role, and that views humans as part object / part subject” (O‟Reilly, 2005, p.3). Although the

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argument had been that classic ethnographic research has been fragmented, Pink (2009) argues that it creates deep contextual understanding, produced through collaborative sensory, embodied engagements and often involving digital technologies in the process of producing knowledge. In this study Facebook is the platform that offers the

contextualization for the ethnographic analysis. As a platform it is the one that it is most popular among football fans, as it provides them the opportunity to gather in hyper-focused groups about their favorite clubs.

Bryman (2008) suggests that ethnography emphasizes in the interpretation of people‟s environments within specific contexts. I decided to apply the method of netnography, as it is the part of ethnography which specializes on the interpretation of societal

developments in online environments. The societal development under study is the digital displacement of fan culture and the context the social media-based communities.

Kozinets (2019, p.23) highlights that netnography is most sufficient method to study fandom as it “shares the fan-oriented emphasis on media, community and passionate engagement”. Netnography is an ethnographic way to study social media, while maintaining the complexities of the cultural qualities which are reflected within the traces, practices, networks and systems. Therefore, netnography is considered the most suitable method for the aim of this project.

Moreover, netnography focuses on the cultural understanding, grounded in the context of people‟s everyday life, in order to explore social systems of shared meeting and are informed of self-awareness not only from the part of the researcher, but also the participants. When people post videos, images or text online or when they comment, share or do anything else available in social networks, they leave behind online traces.

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These days the traces are plentiful, complex and widespread. In addition, they have the form of public social information from which anyone can benefit. By applying content analysis, I try to frame the patterns of digital fandom in the group categorizing them thematically and according to theory. Content analysis is combined with semi-structured interviews. The interviews do not have the role of secondary level of research, but that of necessary follow-up to the content analysis that adds depth to the process of examining the way social media come into play in the process of doing digital fandom.

3.1 Content Analysis

Since this study focuses on the digital displacement of football fan culture, I chose to conduct content analysis on Liverpool‟s officially recognized fan Facebook group in Greece: “GR LIVERPOOL GATE OF PURE & TRUE RED MAD BOYS”. This specific group was chosen as the researcher had already been a member of it for years and had sound indications that it would provide plentiful data in order to answer the study‟s objectives.

Participant observation is the core of ethnography, but since this study centers upon the online environment, it is only logical to turn to the online behavior of people. Observation in online research may involve watching text and images in a screen rather that in offline settings, but still provides direct contact with the social world since participants communicate through online behavior (Garcia et al., 2009). The

ethnographer‟s target is to experience the online site the same way the participants do routinely. I applied content analysis to interpret the online traces which they leave behind them by posting, starting conversations and interacting with each other. I turned my focus

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specifically on these actions as they would correspondingly represent those of fans offline, but transferred to the online environment. Krippendorff (2018, p. 24) defines content analysis as “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use”. Especially, interpretive content analysis is used to understand the meaning of posts in an inductive way, correlating to theory.

According to Drisko and Maschi (2015), analysis should be systematic,

methodologically based and transparently reported, but it is not obligatory to involve quantification. This matches the logic behind this study, as the aim is not to count fans statistics, but to record how they digitally manifest their affiliation towards a club, which relates to the main research question. This is done not only through texts but also posts including images, videos and polls- functions which are offered by Facebook groups. All of these were used as material for the research.

The participants writings are conveyed exactly as they were written, without

standardizing fonts as Markham (2004) indicates. Of course, since the texts are initially written in Greek, the only essential intervention of the researcher was their translation in English. Since being a football fan is not confined to certain time periods, but it is a rather continuous identity, the appropriateness of the picked posts was prioritized and not the time period they were published. The content comes mainly from posts that were created during the time of the research, as it was easier for the researcher to interpret and analyze the deeper meanings of them as they refer to recent events. As far as the amount of the content, it was restricted because of time limitations and the absence of live sport action during most of the period of the study. Nevertheless, the activity in the Facebook

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group was enough to provide data in order to answer the research objectives. The material was selected so as the sample would be representative and valid, not repetitive and by excluding a few cases of hate speech. An uncommon thing, as hate speech is permitted by the rules of the group.

As the lines between data collection, interpretation and analysis are not specific in netnography, the research process was not conducted in a linear way. The five

overlapping sub-practices that Postill and Pink (2012) mention, are followed during the whole length of content analysis: catching up, sharing, exploring, interacting and archiving.

Catching up was done by casually following the activity in the Facebook group, observing what is being posted, the ongoing conversations and archiving those that provided the most relevant data to the research objectives. Catching up is entangled with sharing digital content which is the reason why the Facebook group exists in the first place. Catching up and sharing led to exploring, as it was a frequent practice to follow links posted on the group so as to better understand the mindset of the participants. However, those exploratory trips, as Postill and Pink (2012) indicate, were not too far from the research‟s fieldwork. Interacting was done by occasionally „liking‟ posts or taking part in polls and discussions. Finally, as far as archiving, the Facebook‟s feature for saving posts was used. In this way it was convenient to save posts as soon as they were posted and in the same time categorizing them according to thematical patters that were observed after some time in the fieldwork. These patterns are presented in the results. The analysis of the posts presented insightful data about the way digital fandom is done by transnational fans.

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3.2 Semi-Structured Interviews

The second method of the research were semi-structured interviews. One of the main goals of netnography is to provide access to participants‟ perceptions, values, internal states and beliefs (Kozinets, 2019). This insight is needed supplementarily to content analysis, so as to fully understand the digital fan culture. Because of practical reasons, posed mainly by the geographical distance, the interviews were conducted online, using Messenger, Zoom and phone calls. Moreover, some of the interviews were conducted asynchronously through Facebook messages, as some participants were more willing to answer this way than to get involved in longer video calls. Also, they were reluctant to talk to someone they did not know personally.

Most of the participants that were interviewed were part of the official group of Liverpool fans in Greece at the time of the interviews (between March and April 2020). One was a member of the Leeds United fan club and another one was a founding member of the Newcastle United fan club.

O‟Reilly (2005) touches upon the fact that in a qualitative interview the researcher puts less importance on the quantity of the participants, rather than the quality of the intended outcomes. The questions were structured in an open-ended way, in order to provoke conversation, but in the same time were based on theoretical concepts about mediatization and fan culture as described in the literature review. As far as the length of the interviews, they varied according to the willingness of the participants and whether they provided data on the required subject.

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The questions (Appendix I) were organized according to themes which were deriving from the theoretical background and adjusted to the research aim. The first questions were generally about fan culture and the participants were asked their opinion about supporting through social media, transnational fandom and their cosmopolitan outlook of football. Lastly, the interviewees were asked to give their perspective about mediatization of football, as they have experienced it especially during the period of the pandemic and the mandatory isolation.

Interviews were a suitable method to match content analysis, as talking to the

participants assisted the researcher to form a more spherical outlook for the subject under study. Since one of the aims of this study was to analyze online fan practices as part of engaging with a club, the interviews provided valuable data that could not be obtained through online observations. Stories from their experiences as transnational fans added depth to the attempt to position the digital fan.

3.3 Analysis

The analysis of the knowledge produced thought the different data collection methods in this thesis has been an ongoing and repetitive process (O‟Reilly, 2005). Starting from the initial observations, investigating and getting to know the topic in depth, revising the research questions, to researching and choosing the most insightful Facebook posts and interviewing, I gathered the material that could answer not only the main research question, but also the sub-question. In the whole process, the main theorical concept was that of mediatization and how that could be interpreted in an inductive way in the context of football fan culture.

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The first phase of the content analysis was to refine the accumulated data, in order to pick the material that was not repetitive and would be a representative sample of the reality of the group. As a researcher, I intended to reflect on the phenomenon of digital displacement of football fandom, by illustrating the process of being and becoming a digital fan, engaging from distance through mediatized socialities and capture the

importance of coming together as fans. Moreover, to reflect on mediatization as means of connection for the transnational fans. As mentioned above, five overlapping sub-practices were followed during the whole length of the content analysis: catching up, sharing, exploring, interacting and archiving (Postill & Pink, 2012).

According to Gray (2014, p.331), in the analysis process it is necessary to “ask the data a consistent set of questions, keeping in mind the original objectives of the research study. The intention here is to uncover whether the data fit with these objectives”. Each post was categorized thematically but they all adhere to the main theoretical concepts of this project. Guided by the research questions, the findings had been categorized under initial headlines, reflecting on the patters, themes and practices that had been observed throughout the netnography.

The second phase on the analysis consisted of tying together the findings of the interviews with those of content analysis, under the same theoretical umbrella. The interviews were structured in a deductive way directed by the theoretical concepts, but the rich real-life experiences of the participants led to more open conversations, not only regarding the online engagement, but exhaustively about the effect of mediatization on the essence of football fandom. Since content analysis was combined with interviews in this ethnographic study, it has been essential to analyze how people made sense of the

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media technologies. An approach which Askew and Wilk (2002) call media anthropology.

3.4 Sampling and Participants

The participants for the study were recruited through non-probability, convenience sampling, as they are people participating in a closed Facebook group in which I already had access. Also, the language of transnational Liverpool fans was my native (Greek), so it was much more convenient to deeply understand and interpret the meaning of their discourses.

Due to time constraints and challenges (covid-19 pandemic limiting social gatherings), the research site was limited to the online environment of the group, which was though from the start the main point of focus. Creswell (2014) stresses that purposeful sampling is in the core of qualitative research. Moreover, the logic behind purposeful sampling serves the goal of selecting the case that presents the richest information for the study. The posts that can be found in social media represent some sort of the mainstream thinking of the group identity, but as Kozinets (2019) highlights the differences between people who post frequently and those who do not should be taken into consideration. People who express themselves frequently tend to have more polarized and extreme opinions, in comparison to other members of the community.

Therefore, the two phases of the research are inseparably related. Using the snowball technique, it was asked from the administrator of the Facebook group to point out active members of the fan community in order to provide insightful stories during the

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researcher, there would be the danger of the interviewees being people who are less engaged in this community. In addition, it was more convenient to approach participants who I knew that were generally willing to share openly their stories.

In total five interviews were conducted, a number of participants that provided enough data taking into considerations the time limitations. Three of the participants were

members of the Facebook group and two were supporting other English clubs and were not. The different identity of fans was a way to generalize the results, in order not to depict only Liverpool‟s fans perspective. Also the point of interest for the present study was not their different allegiance, rather than the common fact that they supported an English team from afar.

All the participants were men of the same nationality (Greeks) and living in Greece, thus were supporting their clubs from afar. As far as the content analysis, six main posts were treated as the most adequate examples of the different patterns of the findings and they were included as images in the findings chapter. Apart from them, comments, interactions and posts are analyzed throughout the findings, in an attempt to answer the research questions of this study. All the user names of the Facebook posts have been hidden and the participants have been given nicknames to protect their anonymity. The same applies to the interviewees, apart from two that stated that they responsibly did not want their identity to be hidden.

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3.5 Ethical Considerations

It is the researcher‟s obligation to respect their participants, ensure their privacy and preserve their anonymity. This study follows the international ethical guidelines when it comes to conducting academic research.

The ethical considerations vary depending on the chosen methodology. The online setting in which the study is conducted requires special sensitivity in matters of the privacy of the participants. Since ethnographic qualitative research transcripts people‟s sayings and writings, it is critical to balance between ethics and data collection.

“Respecting participants‟ confidentiality and right to privacy may mean anonymity, but sometimes we have to juggle that some participants‟ desire to be recognized” (O‟Reilly, 2005, p.65). Some of the participants, such as the creator of the fan group, asked their identity not to be disclosed.

Netnography contains its own limitations. It requires great interpretive skills from the researcher as emotions are harder to address through online interaction. In addition, the absence of informant identifiers present in the online context leads to struggles in associate the results to outside of online community groups (Kozinets, 2002). As Kozinets suggests, permission was asked explicitly throughout the process of data collection from the moderators of the group.

The on-going changes and developments in the technological and ethical contexts required to conform the research methodology to the requirements of the Internet Research Ethics 3.0 (franzke et al., 2020). Specifically, this study has taken into

consideration the ethical pluralism and cross-cultural awareness that are required when an internet project involves participants from diverse national and cultural backgrounds.

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Since I openly placed myself as an insider of the phenomenon of digital fandom and longtime member of the Facebook group, that provoked a more personal relationship with the participants, especially during the interviews as they knew they were talking to someone “like-minded” as they called it. Thus, the researcher put greater emphasis on the participants as individuals persons/agents and on the relational conceptions (Ess, 2014). This relates to the chosen research approach, as ethnography entails deep interpretations of diverse behaviors and actions.

In addition, while conducting research on social media it is vital to consider the challenges concerning privacy protection. The internet research ethics were followed in order to protect the anonymity, privacy and confidentiality of the participants (franzke et al., 2020). The research was conducted in compliance with the international GDPR regulations (Kotsios et al., 2019). The members of the Facebook group have been anonymized and they had been informed about the ongoing research by the admin. With his turn, the creator of the group and admin gave his consent to assist in every possible way the ongoing research, as long as the identity of the users‟ whose posts are analyzed was not revealed.

3.6 Limitations

This study had its own methodological limitations. First of all, the nature of ethnography forces the researcher to get directly involved in the research process, by making their own assumptions and interpretations of behaviors and feelings. In the case of this study, it was necessary to be a member of the Facebook group and the community. Also, sometimes the interference of the researcher in the field may alter the originality of

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the observation, as the online environment lacks the forwardness of the face-to-face observation. This may take away in same cases the opportunity to ask meaningful questions to the objects of the content analysis. People were not so willing to respond because of the coolness of the intervening medium, comparing to what a classic ethnographic observation would be.

In addition, Facebook‟s system to filter the most relevant posts on the group, demanded extra effort in order to look beyond posts from the admins and persons that were Facebook friends of the researcher. Their posts were prioritized because of the filtering, especially the older ones chronologically.

Furthermore, due to time restrictions, the fieldwork was conducted in a relatively short period of three months, while traditional ethnographic research demands long-term observations. This is why the research belongs to the category of focused ethnography, as Knoblauch (2005) calls the short-time period researches that are characterized by data intensity. The nature of the platform under study (Facebook) produced plentifulness of data, which though demanding intensive analysis and categorization. Nevertheless, the unprecedented event of the coronavirus pandemic that occurred during the time of the research, had unavoidably its effect on it. Not in the manner of altering the used methodology, but regarding the amount of data that was produced on the Facebook group. The lack of football action confined considerably the amount of posts and

interaction within the group, but in the same time acted as a point of inspiration regarding the phenomenon under study (football‟s mediatization) and how it could be turned from an alleged problem to a solution which relates to the prototype and redefining act of doing digital fandom.

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Content analysis is connected as a method with the prototype, as it discusses and interprets the meanings of online posts created by users. Those are the same users that the prototype addresses as a target group. The prototype itself is a mean for the fans / users to express themselves. However, it can be argued that in terms of reliability, content

analysis could provide with results which do not go enough into depth. That is why it is paired with interviews, in order to have the unframed opinion of the fans / users and increase accordingly the validity of the results, as they are not solely based on the content interpretations of the researcher.