Routledge Digital Football Cultures: Fandom, Identities and Resistance (Advances in Leisure Studies)

As the digital revolution continues apace, emergent technologies and means of communication present new challenges and opportunities for the football industry. This is the first book to bring together key contemporary debates at the intersection of football studies, leisure studies, and digital cultural studies. It presents cutting edge theoretical and empirical work based around four key themes: theorizing digital football cultures; digital football fandom; football and social media; and football (sub)cybercultures. Covering topics such as transnational digital fandom, online abuse, and gender, Digital Football Cultures argues that we are witnessing the hyperdigitalization of the world’s most popular sport. This book is a valuable resource for students and researchers working in leisure studies, sports studies, football studies, and critical media studies, as well as geography, anthropology, criminology, and sociology. It is also fascinating reading for anybody working in sport, media, and culture. Review "a volume that will serve as a foundational reference for future studies in digital fandom and culture for years to come … Summing Up: Highly recommended." - J. R. Mitrano, Central Connecticut State University, CHOICE May 2019 "This book provides interesting and critical insights into an immensely complex social technology which affects all cultures in our modern world, and each chapter provides a launching point for further research or discussion. It offers valuable contributions to an underrepresented area of focus within digitalisation and football studies." - Lise Joern, University of Southern Denmark " [This book] points to an experience of supporters which today is more genuinely international, following the game online, building fan communities, expressing a cultural ownership of club, team, and players, in a manner not always welcome." -Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football About the Author Stefan Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in Socio-cultural Aspects of Sport and Leisure at Newman University, UK. His primary research interests include "race", racialization(s) and racism(s) in sport and leisure, sport for peace and social justice, and sport and digital cultures. He is especially interested in exploring football as a cultural phenomenon. Stefan is Founder of the Digital Football Network (@digiFootballnet), which was created to promote a critical approach to the study of digital football cultures. Stefan tweets from @StefanoLawrence. Garry Crawford is Professor of Sociology at the University of Salford, UK. His research and teaching focuses primarily on audiences, media and consumer patterns, digital media and new technologies, and most specifically, sport fans and video gamers. Garry is Director of the University of Salford Digital Cluster and Reviews Editor for Cultural Sociology.