“We Smoked a Gator!”: An Exploration of College Football Fans’ Instagramming of Food

Social Media Discourse About Division-I Football Players’ Early Exit Announcements: The Role of Expressed Fandom

“…These issues are evaluated as wins or losses and responded to in-kind. Such an extension of this framework recognizes that secondary competitions are opportunities to express fandom, reinforce team cultures, connect with athletes, and make sense of the sporting landscape (Billings et al, 2019;Sanderson 2013;Slavich et al, 2018). These events may increase in salience during off seasons or periods in which actual play is of less significance.…”

“…Social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram are popular venues for fans to consume sport (Billings, Broussard, Xu, & Xu, 2019;Tang & Cooper, 2018), display identity (Larkin & Fink, 2016;Slavich, O'Hallarn, & Morehead, 2018), and manage group norms in response to team performance and athlete behavior (Foote, Butterworth, & Sanderson, 2017;Sanderson 2013). Sport fans express diverse identities that fluctuate between ardent support (Mudrick, Miller, & Atkin, 2016) and vitriolic criticism of teams and athletes (Sanderson & Truax, 2014).…”

“…The coalescing of voices on social media provides compelling insights into the manifestations of fan identity. Sport fans use social media to share community around sport rituals (Slavich et al, 2018), defend athletes from perceived unfair treatment (Sanderson, 2010), and mobilize collective action (Sanderson, Frederick, & Stocz, 2016). Conversely, social media is also a venue for the problematic aspects of fan identity, including the tweeting of hateful messages to players who are perceived to underperform or cost a team a victory (Sanderson & Truax, 2014), as well as the promotion of racist ideologies (Cleland, 2014).…”

“…College athletics have a strong presence in multiple regions of the United States, especially throughout the south and in regions that lack professional sport teams. Identification with college sports teams provides fans with a sense of group belonging and community (Slavich et al, 2018). Yet, as the competitive landscape of Division-I athletics has escalated, so too have fan expectations.…”

Fat shaming, feminism and Facebook: What ‘women who eat on tubes’ reveal about social media and the boundaries of women’s bodies

“…The sensorial and embodied aspects of appetite, desire and consumption are critical aspects of social relationships, so it is unsurprising that relationships of power and status are enacted through the production and consumption of food (Lupton, 2018). Whether it is Instagramming a meal (Slavich et al, 2018) or using Facebook to promote fashion brands (Choi, 2012), social media intersects with multiple gendered discourses on physical and mental health, the body, identity and social acceptance (Gangadharbatla, 2008). This is particularly relevant when the sociology of food and eating has itself become a contentious issue, with digital cultures magnifying public health concern about the quantity and quality of food available, as well as food poverty, food safety and the anthropology of eating rituals (Ward et al, 2010).…”