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Fandom

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Submitted By sarathomas
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Manchester United’ Supporters

"Fandom" as a topic, is arguably one of the most indistinctive concepts of "fan culture". However, we will analyze online fan activity dedicated solely to the Manchester United football club and relate it to the different dimensions suggested by De Kloet & Van Zoonen. We selected this particular topic because we believe all the different dimensions of fan-culture can be applied to this specific fandom group. Studying the nature of Manchester United's fan culture should be crucial to a club. This is obviously due to the fact that fans define and greatly determine the perceptions of the football club. If this truly were the case, it is important to investigate how fans think and act. Some acts and accusations made by fans may give football a negative connotation if they [fans] are being labeled as hooligans. However, in the following paper we take a positive attitude on football fans and try to illustrate what makes them valuable for research. The outlet of fandom explored is an image found on Facebook where Manchester United fans flaunt a flag in favor of the so called "Red Army". The comments on the picture give enough content to analyze the football club's fandom in every dimension suggested by De Kloet & van Zoonen. To grasp a stronger sense of fandom within Manchester United, we will also include a typical supporters’ anthem, which is sung almost religiously every match the club encounters. Additionally, we will define and explain the different dimensions of fandom, illustrate each with respect to the picture from Facebook. Finally, we will investigate what we could possibly learn from studying the fans and then ultimately draw a conclusion based on our analysis.
Concepts
In order to look at the specific examples, we firstly have to introduce the theoretical concepts. De Kloet and Van Zoonen in Devereux (2007)

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