“That’s it. i’m done with this team!”: public reactions to NFL teams’ racial activism as a function of social identity management

ABSTRACT This study utilizes social identity theory to explore fan responses to the NFL teams’ racial advocacy on Twitter at the start of the 2020 football season. A content analysis of 2,868 direct replies and their corresponding user profiles was conducted. Findings supported SIT’s propositions about in-group bias, with commenters being more supportive and less critical of the activist messaging from the official accounts of teams for whom they express fandom. In contrast to expectations, out-group fans were also more supportive, while non-expressive users were the most active and critical of activist messaging. A post-hoc analysis, subsequently, revealed support for the hierarchy of social identity postulate, with in-group fans with conservative political orientation being most likely to renounce their fandom for NFL teams. Collectively, this study speaks to the resistance toward racial advocacy in sport but also frames fan expression and identity as a means of understanding patterns within these conversations.