“Can You Believe This Was Once a Football School?:” Social Media Fan Discourse Before, During, and After Nebraska’s Record-Setting Volleyball Game

Abstract

On August 30, 2023, the Nebraska women’s volleyball team played in front of 92,003 fans at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, breaking a record for the highest-attended women’s sporting event. Using hegemony and feminist standpoint theory, this study offers a feminist critical discourse analysis of 1,079 X posts published before, during, and after the game and addresses how fans discussed this landmark moment in women’s sports. This paper also identifies moments of feminist empowerment limited within a sporting system built around male athletes. The findings from this study contribute to understandings of women’s college sports fandom in the digital age.