Analysis of Media Consumption Behavior of Sports Fans with a Network Approach

Fans like to talk about their favorite team and players with others. Professional team fans use social media to learn more about teams, connect with other fans, follow teams and players, and build a fan community. Social media by creating a network of users has become a platform for researchers to study fan behavior. Given that members of the fan community interact with each other, their opinions on social media also has determined relation to each other. The present study to understand and discover the relationship between fans 'opinions of El Clásico, used the network approach. In this study, Facebook was selected as the research platform to analyze the media consumption of fans about the El Clásico in the 2017-18 season. Finally, fan comments were divided into 14 categories. The results showed that the three nodes of "references to the team", "references to the individual" and "references to the game" are the most important categories that have kept the network of dialogue between the fans dynamic. While these three nodes of "references to the team", "references to the individual" and "references to the game" are important structurally and network-wise , but from a behaviorism point of view, team identification plays a key role in creating such a network. This means that the underlying role of the "use of us and them" node in the network of opinions is certain.