“You are the best… but can you twerk?” How twitter users challenge the messaging around female professional footballers in the 2019 UEFA women’s champions league final in a postfeminist context

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how fans engage on Twitter with the 22 players in the starting line up during the week of the 2019 UEFA Women’s Champions League final. It explores fans’ entangled representations of female professional footballers on Twitter from a postfeminist sensibility. Out of 200 tweets posted by the players during the day of the final and the week after, the research focuses on the 1468 fans replies to the 20 most engaged players’ tweets. To facilitate this, we developed an analysis instrument called the 3Fs Spiral, which helps to disentangle the complex meanings of the fans’ replies on Twitter. Results highlight the fans’ entangled representations and the continuous flow of disruption and reinforcement of the gender order that emerge from them in a set of tweets. The decentralised nature of Twitter has the potential to slowly promote the change of dominant gender narratives and frames in female football.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2023.2211535.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. UEFA is the abbreviation for the Union of European Football Associations, which is the European governing body of association football. UEFA is constituted by the national football associations of Europe, and runs national and club competitions.

2. FIFA is the abbreviation for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association and is the international governing body of association football.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Montserrat Martin

Montserrat Martin, PhD in Gender and Sport from Brunel University-United Kingdom. She is an active member of the Sport and Physical Activity Research Group at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia, where she is a senior lecturer in sociology of sport and research methods. Her research interests include gender-based violence and violence against children in sport organizations and sport contexts.