Kicking Politics: How Football Fan Communities Became Arenas for Political Influence

2025-12-11

AI Summary

This study investigates how political actors infiltrated the ostensibly apolitical Twitter community of football fans in the UK following the 2016–2017 Brexit referendum. Employing a mixed-methods approach integrating social network analysis and fine-grained content analysis, the research identifies three novel patterns of political influence: “hashtag hijacking,” “embedded activism,” and “political amplification.” It provides the first systematic evidence that highly cohesive, tribal subcultural communities can be co-opted—through coordinated efforts by political parties, media organizations, and anonymous opinion leaders—into pivotal arenas of political influence. The core contributions are threefold: (1) a mechanistic model explicating how political actors embed themselves within non-political digital spaces; (2) a theoretical expansion of digital political mobilization frameworks to account for covert, contextually adaptive strategies; and (3) a methodological paradigm for detecting and analyzing surreptitious online political intervention.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Graph Mining, Social Network Analysis & Community
• Natural Language Processing: Sentiment Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications

Abstract

This paper investigates how political campaigns engaged UK football fan communities on Twitter in the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum (2016-2017). Football fandom, with its strong collective identities and tribal behaviours, offers fertile ground for political influence. Combining social network and content analysis, we examine how political discourse became embedded in football conversations. We show that a wide range of actors -- including parties, media, activist groups, and pseudonymous influencers -- mobilised support, provoked reactions, and shaped opinion within these communities. Through case studies of hashtag hijacking, embedded activism, and political "megaphones", we illustrate how campaigns leveraged fan cultures to amplify political messages. Our findings highlight mechanisms of political influence in ostensibly non-political online spaces and point toward the development of a broader framework in future work.

Problem

• Analyzes political campaigns targeting UK football fans on Twitter post-Brexit.
• Explores how political discourse infiltrates football communities via social networks.
• Examines mechanisms of influence in non-political online spaces through case studies.

Innovation

• Social network and content analysis combination
• Case studies of hashtag hijacking and activism
• Leveraging fan cultures to amplify messages