Navigating fandom: how user generated content reflected the conflicting emotions of sport’s importance during COVID-19

Abstract

Despite the global cancellations of sport due to COVID-19, the Australian Football League commenced the 2020 season in empty stadiums. It was one of the few sports still being played globally before the league postponed the season days later. This handful of games helped fans to maintain connection with their sport and teams, albeit only on media platforms. This paper analyses user-generated content from Twitter (n = 2,484) to explore how fans engaged with, integrated, and responded to sport in a global crisis, as well as how they navigated and rationalized their fan experience during this unprecedented time. It focuses particularly on understanding evolving perceptions of sport’s role and importance in society amid evolving uncertainty, due to macro influences that cause conflict and tension within figurations. It also explores the temporal nature of fandom in uncertain and fluctuating sporting environments.