Hibai López, 'Sports Chatter in the Digital Age' presented at Communities in Digital Age symposium,...

Sports Chatter in the Digital Age: The Marca Community in Spain

by Hibai López-GonzálezPompeu Fabra University, Barcelona

What seems to be the problem?

Sports chatter in the digital age:

The Marca Community in Spain

Online-related problems

Sports-related problems

Online sports communities

Disengagement, liquid networks (Bauman, 2000)

Derogatory language (Ruiz et al, 2011)

Chatter, insubstantial conversation (Eco, 1986)

Hostile comments, partisanship, sectarianism (Boyle, 2012)

In the 1980s in the UK, hooligans prevailed over any other fan in football terraces.

The Heysel (1985) and Hillsborough (1989) disasters precipitated a turn in regulations.

The Taylor Report (1990) prompted the beginning of a new spectacle:

— Commodified— Global— Family-friendly— Media appealing

Simultaneously, similar regulations were implemented in many countries. Consequently, hooligans were gradually forced to abandon the stadium…

…and go where?



What seems to be the problem?Sports-related

problems

The community evolves into a network of connections and disconnections (Bauman, 2000)

New characters and new habits emerge with digital platforms:

— Unseen community: Lurkers (Nonnecke & Preece, 2005; Ridings et al, 2006; Li et al, 2008 )

— Flamers, trolls — Flaneurs, tourist fans (Giulianotti, 2002)



What seems to be the problem?Online-related

problems

• We selected the Marca Community in Spain as our case study:

— Presumably the biggest online sports community in Spanish. Over 400,000 registered users.

— Marca is the most read newspaper in Spain (3,100,000 daily readers)

• We focused on the comments posted by Marca members (N=15,131) on 8 match reports during two months.

• Marca provided us with all the comments, including those deleted by the platform due to rules of participation infringement.



Sports-related

problemsSample

Online sports

community

AIM

To examine the Community building (CB) in online sports discussion.

Previous research:

— Knowledge Building (Marra et al, 2004; Zhu, 2006; Sing & Khine, 2006; Lee, 2012; Naranjo et al, 2012; Ng et al, 2012).

— Democracy Building (Xiang et al, 2008; Himelboim et al, 2009; Ruiz et al, 2010; Ruiz et al, 2011; Valenzuela et al, 2012)

METHOD

We adopt the Structural Analysis perspective: User participation & User interaction analysis.

Content Analysis is irrelevant: phatic communities.



Sports-related

problemsAim and method

Online sports

community

Some general facts:

• The 8 news articles had 324,492 readers. Only 1.53 percent of them also posted a comment • 24.07 percent spammers• 2.31 comments per user



Sports-related

problemsResults

Online sports

community

How do users behave?

(Activity and comment deletion correlation r=.847, p<0.002)



Sports-related

problemsResults

Online sports

community

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Rest (>10)0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

350063.82

16.51

7.273.36 1.91 1.57 1.17 0.62 0.62 0.52 3.14

Distribution of users sorted by number of posted comments

# of overall comments posted per user(and above, % users in each group represent of overall users)

# of

use

rs

How do users behave?

The Long Tail of participation



Sports-related

problemsResults

Online sports

community

1 2 3 4 5 6 12 24 480

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

30.99

46.97

56.47

72.41

82.99

98.04 100

Comment posting over 48 hours period

Time elapsed since article publication (in hours)

cum

mul

ativ

e %

of o

vera

ll c

omm

ents

How do users interact?

28.51 percent of the user were interactive. 4.43 comments per interactive user:

— Incoming and outgoing interactivity were correlated (r=.748, p<0.000)— (A) The probability of a core user responding to a non-core user (P(A)=.459)— (B) The probability of a non-core user responding to a core user P(B)= .407)



Sports-related

problemsResults

Online sports

community

1) Huge invisible community. We only see the tip of the iceberg.



Sports-related

problemsConclusions

Online sports

community

2) Not as liquid as we might expect

If we compare Marca users to users in other new sites, we find that in Marca there are less members who only posted once (Pastor, 2010).



Sports-related

problemsConclusions

Online sports

community

93% 95%

72% 88%

63%

3) A horizontal community:

— It is not hierarchically distributed

— No opinion leaders (see Twitter)

— Online facilitators (Himelboim et al, 2009) that allow new users to join the network



Sports-related

problemsConclusions

Online sports

community

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Goteborg: Nordicom.Eco, U. (1986). Travels in Hyper Reality. New York: Harcourt Brace & Comp.Giulianotti, R. (2002). Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flaneurs. A Taxonomy of Spectator Identities in Football. Journal of Sport & Social Issues , 26 (1), 25-46.Himelboim, I., Gleave, E., & Smith, M. (2009). Discussion Catalysts in Online Political Discussions: Content Importers and Conversation Starters. Journal of Computer-

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43 (2), 282–294.Ng, C., Cheung, W., & Hewt, K. (2012). Interaction in Asynchronous Discussion Forums: Peer Facilitation Techniques. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 28, 280–

294.Nonnecke, B., & Preece, J. (2005). Lurking and Public Participation in Discretionary Online Communities. Electronic Commerce Research , 5 (4).Pastor, L. (2010). Periodismo Zombi en la era de las audiencias participativas. Barcelona: UOC.Ridings, C., Gefen, D., & Arinze, B. (2006). Psychological Barriers: Lurker and Poster Motivation and Behavior in Online Communities. Communications of the

Association for Information Systems , 18 (1).Ruiz, C., Domingo, D., Micó, J. L., Díaz-Noci, J., Meso, K., & Masip, P. (2011). Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualities of Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers.

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Newspapers. Communication & Society , 23 (2), 7-39.Sing, C. C., & Khine, M. S. (2006). An Analysis of Interaction and Participation Patterns in Online Community. Educational Technology & Society , 9 (1), 250-261.Valenzuela, S., Kim, Y., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2012). Social Networks that Matter: Exploring the Role of Political Discussion for Online Political Participation.

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Sports-related

problemsReferences

Hibai López, 'Sports Chatter in the Digital Age' presented at Communities in Digital Age symposium,...

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