Emotional sharing in football audiences

Abstract

The negative aim of this paper is to identify shortcomings in received theories. First, we criticize approaching audiences, and large gatherings more general, in categories revolving around the notion of the crowd. Second, we show how leading paradigms in emotion research restrict research on the socialrelational dynamics of emotions by reducing them to physiological processes like emotional contagion or to cognitive processes like social appraisal. Our positive aim is to offer an alternative proposal for conceptualizing emotional dynamics in audiences. First, we offer a notion of emotional sharing for studying the social-relational dynamics of emotions. Second, we propose a working concept of audience as a dynamic and dispersed social collective. Finally, we bring these elements together in the description of two scenes of jubilation.

Towards a Taxonomy of Collective Emotions

“…Emotional matching might also occur in antagonistic settings. For instance, different fan groups in a sports stadium might have matching emotions that enable them to collectively enjoy the game while having a back and forth of competing chants (Thonhauser & Wetzels, 2019).…”

Collective Emotion: A Framework for Experimental Research

“…First, mutual awareness during collective emotion suggests that partaking individuals engage in joint attention. In paradigmatic examples of collective emotion, such as the emotion of audience members watching a sports game (Thonhauser & Wetzels, 2019) or listening to music (Krueger, 2014), individuals exhibit shared or joint attention (Shteynberg, 2018;Siposova & Carpenter, 2019).…”

“…2014), sports audiences (Thonhauser & Wetzels, 2019), online communities (Holyst, 2017;Garcia & Rimé, 2019) and nations (Bar-Tal et al, 2007;Sullivan, 2018). Furthermore, accounts of collective emotion differ in their theorizing, insisting upon different emotional components, such as emotional appraisal or subjective feeling, and putting forwards various explanations in terms of bottom-up factors, top-down factors or both (see Pacherie, 2017 for a review).…”

Black Sheep and White Crow: Punk among Partizan Football Fans

“…22 Neke od njihovih najpoznatijih autorskih pesama su Crno-beli šal, Stoku na jug, Kad jutro svane, Ti si ponos moj, Kop,Skači,igraj,napadaj. 23 Za dalju raspravu o deljenju emocija među navijačima određenih fudbalskih klubova, videti Thonhauser and Wetzels (2019).…”