Then, breakfast is consumed while watching the news. Not politics and weather though, nor business and finance. Always Fox Sports News.
Some require a morning coffee. Without it, they bemoan their inability to properly function. Sporting analyses, news, and interviews are my morning coffee.
However, this isn’t always sufficient. Midday rolls around and I’ll inevitably need to know more. I’ll visit the aptly named Planet Rugby forums, a veritable interactive global community, and …show more content…
Is it truly necessary to know the opinion of every player, coach, former player, former coach, and everyone in-between? Must we scrutinise, analyse, and speculate over these views with likeminded fans? Why even read a blog like this?
Personally, I believe it complements the spectacle, enhances an ongoing narrative, and cultivates a sense of anticipation. However, apparently, motivations run far deeper than these basic justifications.
McCarthy (2012, p.65) explains that sports fans and bloggers extract value from online sporting communities as both “…a way to react to and critique the work of the mainstream media in communicating sports” and “…a means to supplementing and augmenting the work of MSSM in ways that reflect the nature and the media discourses surrounding their particular sport.” In an ensuing analysis, McCarthy (2013, p.431) concludes that a sense of community is vital to consumption of sports media and participation in online forums, declaring, “…social elements were in evidence both in the form and content of the sports blog. This was particularly evident in the near-universal use of the blogroll function, indicating that bloggers of these sports at least want to find each other and to form interconnected knowledge communities together.” Ultimately, Stavros, Meng, Westberg and Farrelly (2014, p.445) proclaim, “fans exercise