“We Are All Broncos”: Hockey, Tragedy, and the Formation of Canadian Identity

Abstract

There exists a broad body of scholarly work that focuses on how communities, and individuals therein, mobilize, respond, and harvest collective action in response to tragedy. Despite this interest, there remains a dearth of empirical investigation into the complex intersections of tragedy, sport, and community. Utilizing qualitative approaches to discourse analysis and quantitative measures of sentiment, semantic, and content analysis of news media articles (n = 151) and public tweets (n = 126,393), this paper explores the ways in which public responses to the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash present a relatively narrow representation of both Canadian and local Prairie identity. We conclude with a discussion of some of the implications of collective action in response to specific forms of tragedy.