Fandom

Resumen. El fenómeno Booktube se configu-ra en un claro ejemplo de la cultura parti-cipativa, donde los usuarios toman las rien-das de los medios para aportar sus propias ideas, en este caso referidas a la literatura. En este trabajo se analiza el carácter que toman las producciones audiovisuales de los booktubers, intentando dilucidar si se trata de un fenómeno fandom que además puede ser evaluado como crítica literaria. Tras revisar algunas ideas en torno a la crí-tica, estaríamos dentro de la categoría en la que Edward W. Said incluye a las reseñas de libros o al periodismo literario, aunque teniendo en cuenta su carácter amateur. También se resalta el que se opte por for-mas de literatura que no forman parte del canon central del sistema cultural, lo que dota de una gran originalidad a la selección de los títulos propuestos. Dada la impronta entre el público juvenil, se recomienda em-prender estudios que aborden la eficacia de este tipo de prácticas en la promoción de la lectura, especialmente en el ámbito universitario. Palabras clave: Booktube; crítica literaria; redes sociales; participación cultural; promoción de la lectura. Abstract. The booktube phenomenon is configured as a clear example of partici-patory culture, where users take control of media offering their own ideas, in this case referred to literature. This article discusses the character of audiovisual productions created by booktubers. Additionally, it tries to resolve if these cases are a fandom phenomenon that also can be considered as literary criticism. After reviewing some ideas towards the criticism, these videos are found to be in the category established by Edward W. Said composed by reviews and literary journalism, although taking into account their amateur nature. Also, it is remarked that the booktubers selection of literary forms do not take part in the central canon of the cultural system. This situation provides the selection of the titles with a great originality. Because of the importance of Booktube among the young audience of readers, new research is recommended in this area for reading promotion , especially at the university level.

Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, has become a global cultural phenomenon. Its growing popularity around the world is indicative of the rise in Asian cultural power. Before entering the markets beyond East Asia, South Korean popular culture was first transmitted in China in the 1990s. Korean popular music, or K-pop, has been a key genre in Hallyu. By employing archival research and case studies, and unveiling rarely considered materials and practices, this dissertation analyzes the constant transmission of K-pop in China in the past two decades, contemporary K-pop fan practices in China, and Chinese K-pop idols’ multiple identity presentations to answer the research question—why is K-pop popular in China. I propose a periodization of K-pop in China based on the different media environment in China after K-pop’s initial entrance into the Chinese market in 1996. Thus, I looked at K-pop in China in the analog media period (1996-2004), the pre-mobile internet period (2005-2011), and the mobile internet period (2012-present). The dissertation first examines the history of K-pop in China. Secondly, the current study uses the Chinese fandom of the male idol group GOT7 as a case study to examine contemporary Chinese K-pop fan practices from the perspectives of fan consumption and fan production. Along with the categorizations of fan consumption and fan production, I postulate that fan labor has become an indispensable part in the operation of the K-pop industry, transforming it into an alternative creative industry. Lastly, I examine the multiple identity presentations of Chinese K-pop idols by looking at the case of GOT7’s Hong Kong-born Chinese member Jackson as well as the political and fandom controversies engendered by such presentations. The dissertation potentially sheds new light on Hallyu studies, Korean studies, and the studies of transnational cultural flows. It also brings new insight to fandom studies and cultural industry studies. It is my hope that the exploration of Chinese K-pop idols will also foster a rethinking of Chua Beng Huat’s (2001, 2012) Pop Culture China in cultural studies, and spark new discussions in celebrity studies.

This paper investigates the way in which the perception of fan behavior is directly correlated to the demographic of the fan. The purpose of this paper is to break down the two styles of fandom, curative and creative, and theorize on how and why these fandoms tend to be more male or female using gender and media theory.

Originally written in 2015 as a final cap stone project for Masters Degree in Media Studies for The New School for Public Engagement.

Da Matrix a Star Wars, da Harry Potter al Trono di spade: i grandi
successi dell’entertainment contemporaneo si basano sempre
più sulla creazione di esperienze di fruizione unificate
e trasversali, che hanno il proprio fulcro in storie e mondi
narrativi che si espandono e si dispiegano su molteplici canali
mediali. Si parla a riguardo di transmedialità: una logica ormai
centrale nelle produzioni mediali contemporanee, ma anche
un modo coordinato di organizzare i contenuti che negli ultimi
anni si è diffuso negli ambiti più diversi, dal marketing
all’informazione, dal documentario all’educazione, fino
a permeare il nostro stesso modo quotidiano di comunicare.

This Master Thesis deals with the phenomena of "fans" and "fandom" in mainstream television. The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, after an introduction about the research process, and the requirements and difficulties of the investigation of a television series, an overview of the phenomenon of fandom from different perspectives is given. Different approaches, both academic and media studies as well as psychopathological, are offered. Some fundamental aspects of television production techniques and their interrelations with the target group, as well as the distinction between audience and fandom, an essential feature of the work shows, will be discussed. The production of fanfiction, being this one of the main bases of research, is discussed in more detail. In the second part of the work deals in more detail with the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series was chosen due to the broad reception, both in academic circles as well a...

Swimming in the waters a half hour drive from Hermione's house, Hermione found some special seashells. She thought they were remarkably different from regular ones, in that these sparkled and transmitted coloured reflections from the sunshine. She didn't know what they were so she went to her magical and rare nature objects book she had found in the library one night looking for an antidote to mild insomnia. After reading from it she found out these shells, when woven with silk thread gave the owners the ability to turn into a mermaid. " Enchanting, " she thought, " this could give me something to do all summer long away from Hogwarts. She found some silk from one of her dresses and unwound it, poking small holes into the seashells and threading them onto the string. By midday on the beach she dove into the water. As soon as she entered the water, her legs felt gooey and they shut together like magnets and her waist began to tingle, slowly turning into a long scaly green skin with a tail and fins. While with her legs, she had only been able to swim the shore without the waves tackling her. Now she was able to ride the waves and swim deep underground.

In this episode, which begins with a brief statement of solidarity with the uprising across the United States against white supremacy and racist state violence, Derek and Nathan break down the recent ESPN Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance with Louis Moore.  Louis Moore is Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University and author of I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 and We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality. and co-host, with Derrick White, of The Black Athlete Podcast.

The conversation examines the absences and presences in the series and what they say about the contemporary landscape of the NBA and athlete activism, with a particular focus on Craig Hodges, Harvey Gantt, Jordan's bullying, Scottie Pippen, Nike, and the unfolding rebellions against the murder of Black Americans by police.

HYBRID FANTASY AND TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING:
THE CASE OF TAMSYN MUIR’S NOVELS
Abstract
During the last few years, we have witnessed the emergence of a new generation of authors who grew up in a transmedia environment and whose works spontaneously adapt to the state of ubiquitous networking and fluidity of narratives that are constantly being re-shaped in different forms. One of the most interesting phenomena in the field of fantasy literature is Tamsyn Muir, a young New Zealand author who has published only two novels so far, Gideon the Ninth (2019) and Harrow the Ninth (2020). Both works aroused great interest and varying reactions precisely because of the confident interplay of different genre identities, as well as the transmedia links between the fantastic narrative and the characteristic conventions of social networks. In her work, Muir uses the internet discourse as developed on Tumblr or Twitter – primarily viral content, i.e. internet memes, but also a rich legacy of fanfiction and video games. Within the limits of this paper, we will try to analyse whether Muir manages to create a harmonious, narrative and artistic unity.

College sports coaches and administrators can use open letters to repair images and weather crises, especially during losing seasons. Our rhetorical analysis uses Benoit’s typology of image repair to reveal three primary strategies attempted during losing seasons: evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, and corrective action. We take note of how open letters distributed via electronic media channels widen the audience of such letters, but also, complicate issues of timing and of targeted audience analysis. We offer five implications for scholars and practitioners, including the importance of audience analysis, the value of corrective action, the ineffectiveness of attacking accusers, and the unique value of transcendence in sport communication image repair rhetoric.

This article examines the Game of Thrones (GoT) fan phenomena in the Arab world. Although I contextualize GoT as a commodity within HBO’s global ambitions to attract a global audience, I study GoT Arab fans as an organized interpretive online community. I examine the Arabic fan Facebook page “Game of Thrones‒Official Arabic Page” (GoT-OAP), which has over 240,000 followers, as a case study of cultural production and consumption by fans. Based on interviews with members of the administration staff of the GoT-OAP Facebook page, as well as textual analysis of the page’s posts, I ask: How is fan culture around GoT produced in the Arab world? How are the boundaries between being fans, media producers, and consumers negotiated? Are there connections between the themes of GoT and the current unrest across the Arab region? If so, how are they articulated? Through emotional realism and hybridity, I show that Arab fans find ways to negotiate their fandom of GoT with their local context and li...

Por meio da compreensão do ativismo de fãs como uma forma de resistência cotidiana cultural, econômica e criativa, o objetivo deste capítulo busca problematizar as relações entre participação, resistência e consumo de fãs do jogo on-line League of Legends (LoL). Enquanto suporte empírico, apresenta-se um mapeamento sobre algumas práticas do ativismo de fãs-jogadores no antigo fórum oficial de LoL no Brasil, a partir de uma triangulação metodológica com destaque para o uso de inspirações etnográficas. Após as reflexões teóricas e as análises, propõe-se uma tipologia das práticas de resistência cotidiana na comunidade de LoL baseada em quatro modos. Os resultados desta abordagem indicam que a diversidade do universo das produções digitais e práticas de parte dos fãs de LoL ressignificam as compreensões sobre resistência e participação, questionando a dualidade existente entre a cidadania e o consumo da cultura pop, agindo como catalizadores que reinterpretam e excedem os limites do fandom.

Attitude-related research in the existing sport literature has focused on measurement of the affect component to examine existing attitudes towards sport teams. Recent studies question sole reliance upon affective reactions to assess sport consumers’ attitudes towards sport teams. Current thinking conceptualises attitudes as possessing distinct structural properties such as importance, extremity, accessibility, certainty, and so on, whose combined presence is believed to be a better measure of attitude formation towards a focal object. This paper presents a conceptual model to advance our understanding of attitude formation relative to sport and athletic teams. The Fan Attitude Network (FAN) Model proposes a process through which the fulfilment of dispositional needs serves as a catalyst for the internalisation of a sport team. The internalisation process culminates in a sport identity that mediates the formation of the structural property importance, which in turn influences the formation of additional structural properties that subsequently impact attitude consequences such as fan loyalty. Based upon the proposed FAN Model, two directions for future research are offered for the systematic study of attitude formation among sport consumers.

Analiza “Der Hund von Baskerville” Richarda Oswalda z 1929 r.

Piszę o tym, co odróżnia film Oswalda od pozostałych ekranizacji przygód Sherlocka Holmesa. Wyjaśniam, czemu ten film zaginął na ponad pół wieku. Opisuję rolę, jaką odegrał fandom w procesie rekonstrukcji.

Staram się dociec, z jakiego powodu akurat ta adaptacja filmowa Psa Baskerville’ów jest kultowa.

In this article, I explore the topic of speculative antiblackness through interviews with two respected authors and colleagues—Ebony Thomas, author of the recent book The Dark Fantastic: Race and Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, and Zetta Elliott, author of Dragons in a Bag and Ship of Souls.

In 1999, Gail Simone circulated a list of female comic book
characters who had been "depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator," sparking a dialogue about gender and comic book culture that continues today. In particular, 2011 and 2012 have been marked by an exponential growth in conversations and criticisms surrounding the state of women in comics, both as producers and consumers. Through a survey of how scholars have gendered comic book readership, an overview of recent incidents that have renewed concern about women in comics, and an analysis of one transformative intervention in the wake of these conversations, this essay broadly discusses the relative invisibility of female comic book fans as a market segment and how fangirls are actively striving to become a visible and vocal force within comic book culture. This essay suggests that we are currently witnessing a
transformative moment within comic book industry, comic book fandom, and comic book scholarship, in which gender is one of  the primary axes of change.

Fans sind ein weit verbreitetes und vielfältiges Phänomen: Menschen sind Fans von Fußballvereinen, Musikern, Filmstars, Automarken, Buchfiguren und vielen anderen Dingen. Es gibt Fans in verschiedenen Altersgruppen und Schichten. Dieser Band legt erstmals eine umfassende Soziologie der Fans vor. Die hier versammelten Beiträge wenden soziologische Theorieperspektiven und empirische Instrumentarien auf Fans und Fantum an. Sie analysieren Fans hinsichtlich ihrer spezifischen Emotionalität, ihrer Kultur und Lebensführung, ihrer Sozialisation und Sozialstruktur, ihres Konsumverhaltens, ihrer Mediennutzung und ihrer politischen Partizipation. Thematisiert werden außerdem die internen Abgrenzungen in Fan-Szenen, Fragen der Migration und Globalisierung von Fans, Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Fan-Gemeinschaften sowie die Geschichte des Fantums.

Audiences for blockbuster event-film sequels and adaptations often formulate highly developed expectations, motivations, understandings and opinions well before the films are released. A range of intertextual and paratextual influences inform these audience prefigurations, and are believed to frame subsequent audience engagement and response. In our study of prefigurative engagements with Peter Jackson's 2012 film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we used Q methodology to identify five distinct subjective orientations within the film's global audience. As this paper illustrates, each group privileges a different set of extratextual referents - notably J.R.R. Tolkien's original novels, Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, highly localised political debates relating to the film's production, and the previous associations of the film's various stars. These interpretive frames, we suggest, competed for ascendancy within public and private discour...

Пользователи (фанаты) и медиа – два полюса, которые не могут существовать друг без друга. Читатель фанатских текстов не просто участвует в интерпретации продукта массовой культуры, он продолжает эту цепочку сотворений и создает новые смыслы. В условиях реальности фандома хорошо видно, что сетевой гипертекст является самоорганизующимся культурным пространством с мобильным авторством. Но фандомный автор – в первую очередь читатель, и оценивать его творчество следует на уровне прочтения оригинального произведения. С целью измерения авторского присутствия в фанатском тексте разработана уникальная шкала оценки текста по его формальным признакам (на примере однородного блока фантекстов, созданных в рамках сообщества поттероманов). На шкале Автор — Интерпретатор в результате проведенного контент-анализа предлагается расположить любой фантекст, в зависимости от большего или меньшего присутствия в нем создателя протослова. Данная работа, таким образом, не только способствует более глубокому пониманию фандомов и их места в системе новых медиа, но также предлагает уникальный способ оценки фанатских текстов по степени их приближенности к оригинальному автору.

In 2012 Ian Watkins, lead singer of the Welsh rock band Lostprophets, was charged with a series of sexual offences against children. A successful group in the UK and beyond, Lostprophets had gained a large fan following, many of whom initially protested Watkins’ innocence. Once the singer pleaded guilty and the group disbanded, however, fans were faced with questions on whether they could (and should) separate the man from the music; if they could continue to be fans of the band; whether their expressions of bereavement were appropriate (and if so where should they grieve); and how their previous fannish engagement with the band had been affected.

While much work has been done on celebrity death, fandom endings and fans’ grieving processes, less has been done on the tensions that occur between fannish attachment and instances of abhorrent behaviour by the object of fandom. In this paper I suggest that the grief that fans felt in response to the allegations against Watkins and his subsequent conviction is similar to the grief fans feel when faced with the death of a favoured celebrity or text, but unlike the latter there are fewer ways of expressing that grief. While tribute pages on Facebook abound for Peaches Geldof and Stephen Gately, and REM fan groups discuss the band’s influence even after their split, pages mourning the break-up of Lostprophets are scarce, and when they do exist are closed groups with few members. I analyse responses to Ian Watkins’ arrest, trial and imprisonment on music forums and blogs and argue that this can be framed in a similar way to which Rebecca Williams (2011) frames celebrity death using Giddens’ ontological security. I further suggest, however, that fannish grappling with issues of morality and ethics complicates both the fannish sense of self and post-object fandom.

In recent years, numerous cult franchises – once the purview of small communities of devotees – have been revived and adapted in order to draw mass audiences. Fans of these texts are left to puzzle out the question of communal and personal fan identity as fandom rapidly expands. This article focuses on the fandom of the science fiction classic Doctor Who, relaunched in 2005 as a ‘mainstreamed’ version, and examines how the introduction of genre hybridity into the text becomes for fans a crucial point in a struggle over the meaning of fandom. Using grounded analysis, the article demonstrates how members of LiveJournal community doctorwho construct their identities by othering two imagined communities: the romance-hating ‘anoraks’ and the romance-obsessed ‘shippers’. Navigating a minefield of undesired positions, these fans are characterised by a discourse of genre and community uniqueness that poses a challenge to the view of fandom as the blueprint for participatory culture.

Fans have a tendency to form one-sided relationships with celebrities who are made famous by both mass and social media. Previous research has shown that celebrity worshipers are more prone to well-being issues than non-worshipers. We studied attitudes toward one’s favorite celebrity among Filipino fans and its relationship to their mental health. Three hundred twenty-three young Filipinos (113 males, 210 females) completed the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), the Public Figure Preoccupation Inventory (PFPI), and the Mental Health Inventory (MHI). Those who were members of organized fandom groups scored significantly higher than those who were not in fandom groups on the CAS and all three of its subscales, as predicted. Members of organized fandom groups scored significantly higher on the PFPI, as predicted, but largely because of a gender interaction effect. There were no significant effects of fandom versus non-fandom group, gender, or an interaction for scores on the MHI. Implicat...

Soap operas and telenovelas are watched by millions of people around the world every day. As cultural, social, and economic phenomena, examining them will further our understanding of the role of global media content in the digital age. Moreover, as these programs continue to be exported and transformed at regional levels, and through digitalization, it is more important than ever to analyze where the genre has been, where it is now, and where it is going.  This collection brings together original scholarship from an international and trans-disciplinary perspective. Chapters address timely issues, theories, and debates that are inextricably linked to soap operas and telenovelas as global industries, as sites for new audiences, and as hybrid cultural products within the digital landscape. Bringing depth and originality to the subject area, each chapter demonstrates the richness of these genres and their long-term significance as the televisual landscape evolves and becomes increasingly reliant on technological and creative innovations.

ABOUT THE CO-EDITORS

Diana I. Rios is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and directs the Institute of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Her research and teaching includes examinations of content such as news and entertainment, and the audience’s functional use of media. She studies race/ethnicity, culture, gender and sexuality in media, and intercultural communication processes.

Mari Castañeda is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and affiliated with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latina/o Studies. Her fields of study include Latinx/Chicana communication, academic labor, and digital media policy. Her engaged scholarship has appeared in various journals/monographs.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Diana I. Rios/Mari Castañeda: Introduction – Mari Castañeda: The Transcultural Political Economy of Telenovelas and Soap Operas in the Digital Age – Jaime S. Gómez: Telenovelas from the Rio Grande to the Andes: The Construction of Latin American and Latina Identities through Media Production Creative Processes – Sung-Yeon Park/Gi Woong Yun/Soo Young Lee: Emergence of Asian Dramas as a Global Melodramatic Genre: The Case of Korean Television Dramas – Tamar Ginossar: Media Globalization and «The Secondary Flow»: Telenovelas in Israel – Cacilda M. Rêgo: From Humble Beginnings to International Prominence: The History and Development of Brazilian Telenovelas – Melixa Abad-Izquierdo: The Cultural and Political Economy of the Mexican Telenovela, 1950-1970 – Daniela Cardini: Looking for ‘A Place in the Sun’?: The Italian Way to Soap Opera – George Ngugi King’ara: Kenyan Soap Operas as Functional Entertainment: Redefining the Role of Television Melodrama for an Active Audience – Petra Guerra/Diana I. Rios/Robert Forbus: Fuego en la Sangre Fires Risky Behaviors: A Critique of a Top-Rated Telenovela and its Sexual Content – Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste: Gender, Drugs, and The Global Telenovela: Pimping Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso – Catherine K. Medina: The Third Subplot: Soap Operas and Sexual Health Content for African American and Latino Communities – Belkys Torres: Hybridity in Popular Culture: The Influence of Telenovelas on Chicana Literature – Martín Ponti: Globo vs. Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão (SBT): Paradigms of Consumption and Representation on Brazilian Telenovelas – Wazhmah Osman: «Trashy Tastes» and Permeable Borders: Indian Soap Operas on Afghan Television – Courtney Brannon Donoghue: Importing and Translating Betty: Contemporary Telenovela Format Flow within the United States Television Industry – Christa Salamandra: Arab Television Drama Production in the Satellite Era.

Each Easter, outside the iconic beachside town of Byron Bay, thousands of music fans converge for Bluesfest – a five-day blues and roots festival where international musicians from rock, blues and roots traditions perform alongside rising local talent, as well as some of the more eclectic musicians from Australia and the rest of the world. Crucially, as part of the live music experience, the music festival enables ticketholders to engage in activities vital to being a fan. While fandom is an elusive concept, it may be partially measured through several indicators: buying artist merchandise, queuing for CD signing and/or photos, and attending musicians’ Q&A sessions. Through such activities, festival participants signal their legitimacy as fans and, often via social media, their membership of a larger cohort of fans. This research utilises university media students to query festival participants about their engagement in these participatory activities and their perspective on ‘being a fan’. What type of engagement and memorabilia is most valued by fans, and how is it acquired? What roles do social media play in the fan relationship? Our analysis identifies specific groups of fans, by their demographics, their newcomer/repeat visitor status, and their reports on how and why they chose to engage in fan-related activities while at Bluesfest. A further concern of the data analysis was to explore the possibility of an underlying ‘economy’ of fan relationships in the digital age.

This thesis investigates the links between community-driven practices of writing around and on a shared subject of devotion in the medieval and modern ages.

I argue that both fanfiction and vernacular hagiography speak to a community need for fulfilment, understanding, and shared devotion which may be distasteful to those parties who believe they "own" the material on which this devotion centres.

Relating vernacular hagiographies in medieval French to modern fan-created narratives, I show that these genres complicate our understandings of authorship, credit, originality, and community.

The purpose of this study was to investigate Pakistani fans in the context of athlete branding regarding foreign cricketers in the country's first ever cricket league. Athlete brand attributes and athlete brand implication discussed with 15 fans of foreign cricketers via semi-structured interview. The components of athlete brand are related with on-field attributes (behavior, team, achievements, style of play and skills) and off-field attributes (physical attraction, lifestyle, personal appeal, ethnicity and entertainment). In turn, implication of athlete branding contributed in the domain of athlete loyalty (media following, creating their own narratives, positive word-of-mouth, resistance to change and commitment), athlete's team loyalty (team substitution, supporting multiple teams and revenue generation) and athlete's sponsors loyalty. The implications of these findings for building and managing an athlete's brand are also discussed.

Conception of ‘star performance’ through popular music is stratified which generates diverse and often contradictory forms of thought. For example, stars and celebrities plausibly act as a ‘culture medium’ in which, through imagination, one’s identity is assembled, realised or constructed. What to become and how to be are questions we individually and collectively contend with throughout our lives to varying degrees (Maslow, 1954; 1968). Predominant use of digital technologies has seen the delivery of sound much altered. Music, be it Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata or Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, once sourced via analogue legacy devices such as ‘old-school’ tape cassette or vinyl record is now a series of zero and one digits. Advocates argue that the key benefit of digitalisation is the ability to compress data because sound generates large files of information. The discourse of digitalisation begs the question of how a series of ones and zeros, albeit in a plethora of configurations, registers with listening bodies and affects ‘the sublime’. It is without doubt that some musical experiences afford indescribable, unlocatable sensation—even enchantment (as defined by Bennett, 2001: 5 and called forth by Redmond: 2014: 126). Such musical experiences might be in the presence of the performer or in their absence such as in the case of recorded music. In this context, any sense of ’real’ space and place is less definitive allowing for ‘special encounters’ to be imagined and felt. For these reasons, music and all that the use of the word might convey, the proposed notion of phaino-ken here, acts as the lens through which to examine the meaning and value of celebrity and star embodiment.

Το παρόν συνθέτει ένα απολογιστικό κείμενο της εμπειρίας μας από τις αυτο-οργανωμένες συλλογικότητες αθλητισμού. Ένα κείμενο που επιθυμεί να πυροδοτήσει τον αναστοχασμό σε αυτές τις συλλογικότητες. Όχι με όρους εσωστρέφειας, αλλά με όρους αναγνώρισης της δυνατότητάς μας να αλλάξουμε τον κόσμο, να δημιουργήσουμε νέους κόσμους… ένα κείμενο το οποίο προσβλέπει στην κατανόηση της δύναμής μας. Ένα κείμενο το οποίο επιθυμεί να μας θυμίσει ότι η μόνη μας πατρίδα είναι τα παιδικά μας όνειρα.
Δεν είναι, συνεπώς, ένα ακαδημαϊκό κείμενο, ούτε προσπαθεί να καλύψει τα στάνταρ της ακαδημίας. Ελπίζει μονάχα να ανταποκριθεί στις ανησυχίες, τις αγωνίες, τις επιθυμίες και τις ανάγκες μας.

While anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals has been shown to increase identification with them and, by extension, concern for their wellbeing, little research has directly tested whether identifying with nonhuman animals is similarly associated with concern for their wellbeing. We tested hypotheses related to this premise across three cross-sectional studies. In study 1 (n = 224), we tested the hypothesis that therians—a group of people who self-identify with nonhuman animals, show greater concern for nonhuman animal rights than non-therian furries—people with a fan-like interest in media featuring anthropomorphized animal characters. In study 2 (n = 206), we further tested this hypothesis using implicit and explicit measures of identification with nonhuman animals to predict behavioral intentions to support nonhuman animal rights. In study 3 (n = 182), we tested the generalizability of our findings in a sample of undergraduate students. Taken together, the studies show that explicit, but not implicit, identification with nonhuman animals predicts greater support for their rights. The implications of these findings for research on anthropomorphism and animal rights activism are discussed, as well as the limitations of these findings and possible avenues for future research.

“‘You’re not a human being, you’re a number, a product, an asset as long as you can perform. If you can’t perform, then you’re a liability and they’ll drop you.’”

Professional athletes suffer tremendous damage to their bodies over the course of their careers. Some literally lose years from their lives because of their injuries. Why do athletes sacrifice themselves? Is it the price of being a professional? Is it all for the fans, or the money? What’s clear is that the physical and emotional tolls of being a professional athlete may not be worthwhile. In Game Misconduct, Nathan Kalman-Lamb takes us into the world of professional hockey players to illustrate how money, consumerism and fandom contribute to the life-altering injuries of professional athletes.

Unlike many critical takes on professional sports, Kalman-Lamb illustrates how the harm suffered by the athlete is a necessary part of what makes professional sport a desirable commodity for the consuming fan. In an economic system — capitalism — that deprives people of meaning because of its inherent drive to turn everyone into individuals and everything into commodities, sports fandom produces a feeling of community. But there is a cost to producing this meaning and community, and it is paid through the sacrifice of the athlete’s body.

Drawing on extensive interviews with fans and former professional hockey players, Kalman-Lamb reveals the troubling dynamics and dangerous costs associated with the world of professional and semi-professional sport.

Kalman-Lamb’s book lends a very important perspective into the microcosm that is sports and what it may be saying about humanity.

— Royce White, NCAA, NBA and NBLC player

Bringing high theory to the hockey rink, Nathan Kalman-Lamb has done what few other critical sports scholars have: write a book that is both scholarly rigorous and accessible to the everyday sports fan. Game Misconduct shines the flood lights on the dark corners of the sports industry. Is another world of sports possible, one free of exploitation, alienation, and the sacrifice of athletic bodies? Read this book and find out for yourself.

— Simon Black, former NCAA athlete and sports columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine

At the heart of professional sports, insists Nathan Kalman-Lamb, is the sacrifice of the athletic body. Wading through a battlefield of injured players, obsessed fans, and profit-hungry owners, Game Misconduct reveals ugly secrets of the sports business. After reading this incisive analysis, none of us will ever watch a sports event in quite the same way—nor should we.

— David McNally, author of Global Slump

Kalman-Lamb’s brilliant, quite moving study of hockey, injury, and identity gives us a model for critical sports studies at their very best.

— Orin Starn, author of The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal

A path-breaking book that invites readers into radical analysis by way of the absorbing stories of professional athletes and their fans.

— Alan Sears, author of The Next New Left

Nathan Kalman-Lamb’s eloquent and well-researched book Game Misconduct has has moved the discussion of sport and social inequality to a new terrain.

— Gamal Abdel-Shehid, York University

representation of knowledge to representation of an action. Because of the technological advancements, social media users do not depend on time and space and can operate in an open and free way. In the social media sphere people are expected to add, change and interact with the contributions of others, who are involved into the process of information exchange56.Social media users are enabled to personalize and shape their information environment internally and externally. It means that all fans can specify and modify all the information they will to share (external personalization) and compose own social media profile according to individual needs or interesting, then the social media profile reminds some type of personal newsroom57. To take an action or not, people need some motivational factors that force them to contribute the information. The expectancy theory explains that in general someone’s decision depends on needs for obtain the reward58. F.C. Lunenburg stated that a perso...