Becoming a Sports Fan and Being a Voter
As we mentioned last week, Farrah has written this analysis of the paper here: Lessons (and Questions) from the Women’s March. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Continuing a bit on a previous mail out on analogous research, another area we spent some time studying was sports fandom as it related to how people think about voting.
A couple highlights came up from how people think about sports and fandom. The first is around family and place. Sports fandom is often something that has a personal familial connection: I started watching this sport with my (usually) father, and it’s a way to stay connected with him. Or: I follow the local teams and when the city is all cheering for them, it’s a fun and important way to talk with and connect with others around me… This latter led to some amusing stories of faked fandom - the learning about a sport in order to keep a conversation going during a playoff run or World Cup event, or tolerating it at the bar in order to go out with everyone.
A second element coming from this is a sense of tiers of fandom. There are levels of fandom, indicated from being a ‘bandwagon fan’ to a die hard, and ways by which people elaborate and authenticate their fandom. Some even say “I’m not a real fan” - typically because of a belief that to be a fan means to be a die hard. My favourite example of this was someone who watched basketball, primarily a single team, knew many of the players’ names, knew of past playoff runs, but didn’t identify as a “real fan” because they both hadn’t been to a live game, and didn’t own any memoribilia, and hadn’t followed them much the few months.
This actually mapped really well to how many people talked about their experience of voting. Many voters interviewed, or individuals who identified as voters interviewed, talked about not being “good voters”. They voted, but didn’t know all the candidates, voted, but didn’t know the major policies, or just hadn’t ‘followed much of this past election’. And they talked about this bashfully and with a bit of shame, as if they had really failed their democratic duty because they hadn’t spent more time researching and following the election. In one case, someone said with shame that yes, but they hadn’t donated or volunteered at all this past campaign.
Sports fandom can in some cases unfortunately be quite toxic and inhospitable. Inclusion can become something that has to be proven, and Our discussions around voting have an unfortunate parallel. We take cues in both cases from a small minority of participants for what constitutes “good” participation. When, in truth, casual fans are important for sports, and showing up to vote is the biggest part of the challenge.
This doesn’t just stop with voting. An example to concretize this comes from some research cited by Lucy Bernholz at Stanford, when, looking at Americans who participated in a rally, speech or protest. 20% of Americans did so in the past couple years, and of that 20%, 80% of those folks identified as a “non-activist”. Certainly it’s a bit of a stretch for someone who attends a protest to immediately identify as an activist, but maybe that’s part of the problem. Part of the beauty of sports fandom is its capacity for inclusion and identification … certainly not all of the million plus folks who went to the Toronto Raptors championship parade were “true fans” but also, they all can and could identify as fans through that act. Missing watching a game doesn’t make them less of a fan, nor does not seeing a game live, but those are experiences that, as part of being a fan, become more valuable and cherished. You can go to a game and become a fan, or become a fan and then go to a game. How can civic engagement map onto or even follow a similar model?
Expect a longer post at some point on all of this, but just something to think about!
Lucy Bernholz’s Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society Blueprint 2019
Kaiser Family Foundation’s Survey on American Political Rallygoing and Activism
Andy Hind’s 2013 Atlantic Piece: I’m Considering Becoming a Sports Fan - How Do I Pick a Team?
Work on how we understand civic engagement by immigrants. A backgrounder, as well as some analysis from our pilot study in the area looking at participation by New York City non-citizens.
Approaching the “Ladder of Participation” as referred to in civic engagement discourse. Where it works and how it doesn’t, and contextualizing our own research in terms of that model
Deep dives into some of our qualitative work done to date in analogous fields and around voting and not voting during the 2018 midterm elections
Thank you to all those who have already dropped a line and shared your thoughts. And thanks in advance to sharing this with anyone else you think might be interested.
If you think of feedback, suggestions, or people we should meet, please get in touch! You can email us at: 1stpersonprojects@thedifferenceengine.co