Mindless Thugs Running Riot? Mainstream, Alternative and Online Media Representations of Football Crowd Violence

Abstract

This article examines the nature of media coverage of football (soccer) crowd violence in three European countries (England, The Netherlands and Spain). It presents an analytic framework that draws on etic (outsider) and emic (insider) perspectives, and illustrates how each perspective is (re)presented in different forms of media. Whereas the mainstream media's reporting of football crowd violence generally is consistent with the notions of etic representation and moral panic, alternative media tend to construct emic perspectives and use dramatised personal experience in reporting. The framework presented provides a foundation for further analysis and empirical investigation of media depictions of football crowd violence.