Author Archive
Society of Crazies: How Sports Create Insane Fan Identity
On February - 3 - 2013
Sports provide us with some incredible (and incredibly ridiculous) examples of sport identity. This term is defined as “those aspects of an individual’s self-image that derive from the social categories to which he perceives himself to belong" (see book Examining Identity in Sports Media, edited by Heather Hundley and Andrew Billings) In other words, this is just a fancy way of academics understanding the fans’ and athletes’ selves in the realm of sports and our society. The development of identity comes from a feeling of belonging within a group, which in this case would be a specific sport or sports team: Fans view ...