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Author ORCID Identifier

N/A

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Communication

Year Degree Awarded

2018

Month Degree Awarded

September

First Advisor

Emily West

Second Advisor

Anne Ciecko

Third Advisor

Jarice Hanson

Fourth Advisor

Amy Schalet

Subject Categories

Asian Studies | Communication Technology and New Media | Critical and Cultural Studies | Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication | Leisure Studies | Social Media | Sociology of Culture | Sports Studies

Abstract

This dissertation explores the Chinese fandom of European male football and its relation to the formation of the Chinese urban middle class. I use online and offline ethnography, critical discourse analysis and textual analysis to examine the socio-cultural roots, technological conditions, and political implications of Chinese fans’ transmedia practices. My findings are twofold. First, I argue for the articulation between the European football fan identity and the subject of urban middle class emerging from the post-Maoist social restructuring. This articulation is reflected from these fans’ active reading of the European football text and their access to European football as conditioned by social positions. Second, in the examination of fans’ appropriation of digital media in televised spectatorship, community building, and online deliberations, I analyze the individualistic nature of these fans’ collectivity enabled by digital fan practices and how this individualistic virtual collectivity has limitations in terms of further power struggles and political actions. I conclude that localized digital technologies facilitating European football fans’ virtual collectivity around and progressive interpretation of a transnational text are themselves part of China’s state project of authoritarian digital capitalism that articulates neoliberal individualism and authoritarianism through technological revolution.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/12350437

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