New Media and Hooliganism

The New Media and Hooliganism: Constructing Media Identities.This paper will focus on the football culture, hooliganism and new media.The main target is the production of the picture of hooliganism on Internet,as well as the consumption of this “picture”. The paper, will thereby, examinethe relation between “The old media”, ”the new media” and ”hooliganism”.This discussion will be related to an analysis of the website www.sverigescenen.com, a Swedish online magazine. A central question is: How are differentpictures/images of the hooligans constructed and described in the newmedia landscape? And does this contemporary picture differ from the “oldmedias” images of the hooligans? In this respect, Nordic criminologists haveinformed about the power and the influence of media. They have - close to amoral panic - uphold various social evils that have normally and frequentlybeen related to the power of media in general. This power can be used toinduce a fear amongst ordinary people; a fear of criminal act. This influenceon the moral discourse could, in the extension, maintain a fear that is outof all proportion to actual risks. Previous research has in general indicatedthat mass media has a great impact on the (re-)production of the “narrativestories” of hooliganism and hooligans. Importantly, the new media landscapecreates new conditions for this “narrative picture” of hooliganism, dueto the fact that both supporters and the hooligans themselves are active andvigorous media producers. This "new" situation of participation/engagementinvolvement in the media production will expand and transform the researchon the media process, focusing both on producing and consuming media. Inthis light, the new media construction of hooliganism stand out as an importantsubject