Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The digital productivity of football supporters

2016; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1354856516678396

1748-7382

Ana Carolina Vimieiro,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

This article analyses media production projects run by football supporters in Brazil. From in-depth interviews and analysis of the material produced by fans of a singular club, Clube Atlético Mineiro (also known as Atlético-MG or Galo, its nickname), the article explores the ways supporters appropriate the journalistic language and create innovative narratives that enrich and pluralize the media environment. Formats vary from blogs to running web radios with regular programming. Motivations for engaging in the projects are also diverse, from improving writing skills to helping the club. The supporters and initiatives here considered promote innovative approaches especially in three ways: (1) placing ordinary supporters at the centre of their narratives; (2) adopting unconventional methods of reportage that challenge the dependency of journalism on regular productive routines and that are able to provide unusual angles of sport-related stories; and (3) creating texts that resort less to the increasingly rational and bureaucratic language that has notably characterized sporting chronicles over the past few decades. Besides, these texts and their parallel circuits of fan production have played an important role in sustaining contemporary alternative football fan cultures in an increasingly hypercommodified football context.