Online Community or Electronic Tribe? Exploring the Social Characteristics and Spatial Production of an Internet Hockey Fan Culture

Abstract

Scholarly interest in the relationship between sport and new media has increased significantly in recent years, yet research about online sport fan groups remains limited. This article contributes to this body of literature through an ethnographic examination of a fan-produced hockey blog called Nucks Misconduct. The article examines the blog’s social characteristics by conceptualizing it as an electronic tribe—that is, a fluid, neotribal social formation located in cyberspace. Specifically, it explores how the interplay between topographical website features and the social interaction of members constructs the blog as a social space; and the tensions and ambiguities that arise from this process. The possibilities and limitations for online sport fan cultures to destabilize dominant constructions of sport are discussed, with a particular focus on the gendered construction of hockey as a masculine realm.