Abstract
Abstract Brazilians watching the US National Football League (NFL) interact on social media during the broadcast of league games. Since fan consumption practices can establish identities from the intensity of involvement with media products, this research aims to analyze how Brazilian NFL fans constitute cultural identities in their interactions on social media during the broadcast of league games. We use netnography, a method commonly used in studies that seek to understand cultural phenomena that occur through online interactions. The research corpus was formed by messages posted by fans on Twitter hashtags created by the ESPN channels of Brazil, during the games broadcasted in the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons. The results indicate three identity categories: nationalism, as a way of projecting an idealized image of a nation; localism, as a demarcation of tensions of the differences existing in the country; and social minorities related to gender and sexual orientation, revealing tensions and conformities in the social construction of these positions. By revealing identities strongly related to the notion of place and different representations of the hetero-masculine, these findings are evidenced as a particular version of the central values of the sport itself in its country of origin.
Highlights
Modern society can be understood by its cultural manifestations of entertainment, with sports being one of its main sources (RUDDOCK, 2010; WHANNEL, 2014)
National Football League (NFL) has great economic value, being the world most lucrative league (OZANIAN, 2017). It has a huge social and cultural importance, since it has the capacity to direct social perceptions and to shape practices of the tradition (WENNER, 2012, 2014; WHANNEL, 2014), as well as counts with highly engaged fans that work as spreaders of the league (OATES and FURNESS, 2014)
From the understanding that consumer practices are capable of constituting cultural identities, present research aims analyzing how Brazilian NFL fans constitute cultural identities in their interactions on social media during the league games broadcast
Summary
Modern society can be understood by its cultural manifestations of entertainment, with sports being one of its main sources (RUDDOCK, 2010; WHANNEL, 2014). Brazilian NFL viewers interact in social media during the league games broadcast. These aspects lead us to the understanding that the interaction of the Brazilian NFL viewers, when observed as consumption practice, indicates identity formations.
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