Chapter 35 Exercises

Comprehension Exercises

Exercise 35.1 — The Five Structural Differences Write a paragraph on each of the five features that distinguish sports fandom from media fandom (geographic loyalty, real stakes, embodied community, multigenerational depth, social integration). For each feature, do two things: (1) explain the feature clearly, using a specific sports example, and (2) identify a media fan community that partially shares this feature, explaining in what ways it does and does not apply. For example: Does the Kalosverse fan community have geographic loyalty? In what limited sense might it?

Exercise 35.2 — BIRGing and CORFing Robert Cialdini's original study examined pronoun use (we/they) after wins and losses. Design a follow-up study that tests BIRGing and CORFing using a behavioral rather than linguistic measure — specifically, social media behavior (posting frequency, profile visibility of team affiliation) across a ten-game period of wins and losses. Specify: your hypotheses, your measurement method, what data you would collect, and how you would control for confounding factors (e.g., fans posting more because games are more exciting during winning streaks, not because of BIRGing).

Exercise 35.3 — The Stadium Experience If you have attended a live sporting event, describe the experience using at least three concepts from the chapter (collective effervescence, embodied community, synchronized sound, visual field, physical vulnerability, shared temporal experience). If you have not attended a sporting event, find a high-quality film or documentary capturing stadium atmosphere and analyze what you can observe of the phenomenology from outside. Conclude by explaining what, if anything, cannot be captured from outside the stadium experience.

Analysis Exercises

Exercise 35.4 — Social Identity Theory and Rival Hatred Apply Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory to a specific sports rivalry of your choosing (options: Manchester United/Liverpool, Yankees/Red Sox, Real Madrid/Barcelona, Lakers/Celtics, India/Pakistan cricket). Your analysis should: (1) identify the in-group and out-group, (2) describe how in-group valorization manifests in fan discourse, (3) describe how out-group derogation manifests, (4) identify any historical events that define the rivalry for fans, and (5) evaluate whether the rival hatred in this case is primarily geographic, class-based, historically rooted, or some combination.

Exercise 35.5 — The Anti-CORFing Principle The chapter argues that subcultural capital in sports fan communities is partly accumulated through anti-CORFing — visible loyalty during losing seasons. Find a documented example of a sports fan community during a sustained losing period (suggestions: Cleveland Browns fans during the 1990s-2010s; Chicago Cubs fans pre-2016; Detroit Lions fans across multiple decades). Analyze the cultural mechanisms through which loyalty during losing is demonstrated and rewarded. What specific practices, statements, or rituals constitute high-capital anti-CORFing behavior in your chosen community?

Exercise 35.6 — Race and Sports Fandom The chapter identifies three dimensions of race in sports fandom: demographic attendance patterns, white fan communities' relationships to Black athletes, and athlete activism reception. Choose one of the three dimensions and write a 600-word analysis applying concepts from Chapter 7 (race and fandom) to your chosen dimension in a specific sport and national context. Be specific: use a concrete case (a specific team, a specific athlete, a specific incident) to ground your analysis.

Comparison Exercises

Exercise 35.7 — Sports vs. Media Fan Community Using a table format, systematically compare a sports fan community of your choosing to one of the book's three running example fan communities (Kalosverse, ARMY, or Archive and the Outlier) on the following dimensions: - Basis of membership (geographic, interest-based, or other) - Platform dependence - Fan labor practices - Governance structure - Identity management (BIRGing/CORFing or equivalent) - Conflict patterns - Cross-generational transmission

After completing the table, write two paragraphs: one on the most important similarity and one on the most important difference.

Discussion Questions

Exercise 35.8 — Group Discussion: The Ethics of Rival Hatred In groups of three to four, debate the following proposition: "Sports fan communities' cultural normalization of rival team hatred makes sports fandom ethically different from (and worse than) media fan communities."

For the proposition: What harms does rival hatred produce? How does cultural normalization of group-based hatred affect participants? Does the sports context meaningfully limit the hatred to "just entertainment"?

Against the proposition: Is ritual rival hatred meaningfully different from media fan wars? What positive functions does rival hatred serve in community formation? Is there meaningful harm from calling Liverpool fans "Scousers" in a chant?

After debate, discuss: Is there a version of sports fandom that preserves the community and identity functions of rivalry without the derogation component?

Exercise 35.9 — The Kaepernick Question The Kaepernick case is presented as a conflict between fans' claim to the athlete's public self and the athlete's claim to use their platform for political expression. Where do you stand on this conflict, and why? Identify the principle you are using (what makes an athlete's platform theirs to use as they see fit? what gives fans a stake in how athletes use their platform?), and test that principle against a different case: a K-pop idol who uses their platform to make political statements that some ARMY members disagree with. Does your principle apply consistently?

Applied Exercise

Exercise 35.10 — Mapping Fan Labor in Your Sport Choose a sport you follow or have some knowledge of. Map all the forms of fan labor you can identify that sustain that sport's fan community: (1) organizational labor (who runs fan clubs, supporters' groups, etc.?), (2) creative labor (who produces fan content — chants, art, statistics?), (3) promotional labor (who promotes the sport outside the stadium?), (4) preservation labor (who maintains historical records, archives, etc.?). For each category, estimate roughly how much total time is invested per week by fans in your chosen sport's community. Then ask: if this labor were compensated at minimum wage, what would the sport's cost structure look like?