Many decry ‘superteams’ like the NBA’s Golden State Warriors as bad for the sport. But psychology research shows that they also make us more likely to watch – and bask in the joy of seeing them fail.
Fanfiction: all it takes is to imagine a story beyond the canonical work.
Kristina Alexanderson/flickr
Being a footy fan is not mainly about the glory of a premiership – it is much more about enjoying the gravel-shovelling entailed in each and every season your club goes without success.
Men might believe that women don’t have what it takes to be serious sports fans but new research into female AFL fans proves them wrong. Some women are footy converts, some have it in the blood – and some were born to it.
Star Trek fans were especially drawn to Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock – who showed many that it “was okay to be a nerd, that even in the future not everyone fit in, or needed to.”
Sam Howzit/Flickr
Lynn Zubernis, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Star Trek fans were especially drawn to Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock – who showed many that it “was okay to be a nerd, that even in the future not everyone fit in, or needed to.”
With the release of Fifty Shades of Grey in cinemas this week, serious questions have been raised about whether the film depicts abuse – including on The Conversation. Some feminist groups have staged…
First in line Jason Ray (left) and Moon Ray (right) line up outside the Apple Store in New York, ready for the launch of Apple’s iPhone 6.
EPA/John Taggart
Just as with all the earlier versions of the iPhone, rumours abound about what Apple will announce this week in relation to iPhone 6 – new screens, different sizes, powerful chips, faster processing and…
Radamel Falcao joins Manchester United on loan in one of deadline day’s big deals.
Sebastien Nogier/EPA
Transfer deadline day is over for another year. As always, it brought drama galore, with deals thrown together at the last minute, like the “shock” announcement three hours before the deadline that Danny…
Why are we so loyal to our national and club football teams? Whatever the results, we tend to support them week in week out, through thick and thin. They can cause us nothing but misery and heartache and…
Sport is often compared with religion in Australia. But how do fans’ relationships with their football teams manifest?
AAP/Joe Castro
At some point, you’ve no doubt heard someone say “football is my religion”. And if we follow French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s famous building blocks for religion, we will find that football is not far…
Interim Director, UWA Public Policy Institute; Associate Professor & Programme Co-ordinator (Masters of Public Policy), The University of Western Australia