(Celebr)Emotions in Social Media: The Prosocial Role of Young Sports Celebrities on Their (Young) Publics

Starting from the framework of the mediatization of sport(Frandsen, 2014, 2020; Tirino, 2023) and from celebrity studiesthat intersect media studies (Marshall, 1997, 2007; Rojek, 2001; Turner, 2004, 2010; Driessens, 2013; Hearn & Schoenhoff, 2016), our paper aims to emphasize the prosocial role that young sports celebrities have on their (young) sports fandom (Sandvoss, 2003; Sandvoss, Gray & Harrington, 2017). Relevant to our discourse is the role that social media play. Social media, in fact, act as affective media environments (Grusin, 2017; Farci, 2019; Tirino& Castellano, 2020), mediating sports emotions, which are reconfigured in the spaces of symbolic negotiation, shaped by Netenvironments. Sports fandom adapted to new patterns of sports consumption (Sandvoss, 2003; Williams, 2007) and new mediascape configurations, and interpret media content unexpectedly, participating in community processes (Hills 2018), within an affective dimension (Hills 2002).

The starting point is media education (Jenkins et al. 2006), more specifically social media education (Livingstone 2014), that enables young athletes to develop a high level of (digital) literacy so that these media are used consciously, exploiting their potential and avoiding their risks (Castellano, 2022; Tirino, 2023), but also to manage their success and their public image. In comparison to aged celebrities, who are in a waning phase of their careers, and not at the top, young sports celebrities, with highly structured and participative fandoms, need to develop an appropriate level of literacy. Our paper wants to investigate young celebrities’ prosocial role and emotions exploitation through their communication and content, and their effect on fandom. To achieve our goals, we decided to apply media content analysis(Macnamara 2005) of the Instagram and TikTok profile of young sports celebrities (the football player Lamine Yamal, the F2 and F1 driver Kimi Antonelli, the swimmer Torri Huske).