Johnathan Anderson
PhD Candidate
Contact Information
Research and Creative Interests
- Sports Media
- Identity and Culture
- esports
- Sports Media Effects
- Sports and Race
- global media studies
- video games
- social media
Biography
My research can be found in the overlaps between Sport, Identity, and Media. Primarily, I am interested in how sport has the potential to construct and deconstruct feelings of national identity in sports fans, as well as the role teams and individual athletes play in this process. I am also interested in the role that social media and video games play in the fan experience as they take to these mediums to vent, connect, boast, alter, or escape the emotions that sport inspired them to feel.
I received both my BA and MA from the University of Alabama. My master’s thesis was a thematic analysis of both online coverage and Instagram posts of three celebrity soccer players (Christian Pulisic, Mohamed Salah, and Son Heung-min). The study discerned themes from across two distinct time periods: the 2018 World Cup (June – July 2018) and the second half of the 2019-20 Premier League season (January – June 2020) to illustrate how these athletes are being represented, and presenting themselves, as national cultural icons for the formation and affirmation of national identity in their home nations year-round, not just when they are playing for their countries.