Criticism, consensus, and fandom: Demonstrated practices from a sports Facebook fan page Xima Avalos a , Gonen Dori-Hacohen b,⇑ a San Fransisco Public Library, United States b Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 650 North Pleasant St, Amherst, MA 01003, United States article info Article history: Received 26 February 2018 Received in revised form 29 November 2018 Accepted 30 November 2018 Available online xxxx abstract Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Online fandom, criticism and identity Online fora for the participation of ordinary people in the polit- ical and public discussion are gaining central attention in current society and therefore in the study of the public sphere (Johansson et al., 2017). Continuing these research venues, we study the public of sports fans commenting on Facebook. Yet, ‘‘sports fan public” is a contested notion: historically, the image of the sports fan is one of a member of a crowd (Le Bon, 1895/1960) of singularly minded, emotional group, antithetical to the rational citizen of the public. This characterization is also linked to the passive sender-receiver model of audiences’ relation to media and to the notions that groups are detrimental to individ- uals (Hornsey, 2006). We, however, follow Sandvoss (2009), who saw the sports fan as an element of the public sphere, and van Zoonen (2004), who saw fandom zones as publics. Specifically, we discuss a missing element from her theorization of the fan- public, criticism. We show that a fan-community can be critical of the fan-object, and not only of elements of its production (Hadas and Shifman, 2013). Additionally, we show how consensus is central in the (trans)formation of the fan-public. Hence, we use sports fandom to discuss the public more generally and conclude that unlike Habermas’s (1989) view of consensus as the result of the public discussion, forming consensus has a different benefit for the public. Sports audiences reflect a model of ‘‘conventional crowds” which are ‘‘sponsored and orchestrated by established organiza- tions” (Butsch, 2008, p. 9). Sports fandom is based around geographically and temporally grounded sports organizations. We join the view that turns crowds and audiences into participa- tory vehicles as collectivities (Livingstone, 2013). Additionally, current platforms highlight how fans tend to act as a community (Baym, 1995) with shared goals, spaces, and actions. Therefore, the model for sports fans resembles a public more than a crowd and definitely that of a participatory audience. This theorizing of fans aligns with van Zoonen’s (2004) fan- public and resonates with the classic public sphere view (Habermas, 1989). We do not repeat Habermas’s Public Sphere features here yet we take his view of the public sphere as a space in which equal people have equal access to critically and rationally discuss those in power to promote social change. The result of these discussions should, according to Habermas, be a consensus, due to the participants’ relationality and rationality. This consen- sual conclusion of the public sphere was criticized (Mouffe, 2000), yet the public we studied reached a consensus. This consen- sus is tightly connected to the criticism in the public sphere: the consensus allowed members to be critical while staying members of the public. Thus, our suggestion is opposite to Habermas’s: whereas he suggested that critical discussion should lead to a con- sensus, our data shows that consensus legitimizes criticism as the first step towards collective action. The fan-public is a concept that grows out of discussions of online communities. Van Zoonen (2004) found that fan communi- ties were socially structured, had similar uses and evaluations of social action, and their social force was based on shared emotions. Hence, she argues for viewing a community of fans as a fan-public. She demonstrated how these fan-publics were emotionally mobi- lized to act regarding reality TV shows. However, van Zoonen did not demonstrate the fan-community as public in one major respect: she does not show fans’ critical engagement. Dori- Hacohen (2013) demonstrated that the concept of ‘fan-public’ is useful in American talk radio, especially since these shows present a critical discussion of politics. We discuss sports fans as a version of the Habermasian public, taking criticism as a lynchpin of the public sphere. We demonstrate that criticism, which is at times conceived as not being part of fandom, is a key component of demonstrating fandom in our online arena. Therefore, we show https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.11.006 2211-6958/Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: gonen@comm.umass.edu (G. Dori-Hacohen). Discourse, Context & Media xxx (xxxx) xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Discourse, Context & Media journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dcm Please cite this article as: X. Avalos and G. Dori-Hacohen, Criticism, consensus, and fandom: Demonstrated practices from a sports Facebook fan page, Dis- course, Context & Media, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.11.006