In conversation with Renee Hess of Black Girl Hockey Club (original) (raw)
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Through a case study of the Black Girl Hockey Club (BGHC) founded by Renee Hess, this doctoral research project investigates how an online sports network operates as a community of resistance to racism, uniting political action with the joy of sport. Hess initially established media sites including a Twitter handle, '@Blackgirlhockey' as a fan account, to attract Black women who enjoyed watching and engaging with hockey cultures. The COVID 19 pandemic and the 2020 global racial uprisings transformed the Black Girl Hockey Club into a site for hockey fandom while simultaneously influencing hockey environments and users of the site to address racism. This dissertation uses mixedmethods to employ an in-depth case study of the BGHC, a not-for-profit organization and digital network with over 30K Twitter followers. The thesis integrates theoretical and methodological frameworks of critical media studies, Black feminist theory, critical race theory, anti-racism, and social movements. The thesis demonstrates that cyber networks can enable participants to initiate social change within their own communities. The effectiveness of hashtag feminist sports activism was demonstrated through an analysis of BGHC's #getuncomfortable campaign. Various outcomes related to involvement with Black Girl Hockey Club were explored including the blurring of on and offline engagement and the development of political consciousness among users of the site. Research
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Frozen Out: Audiences, Affect and Women's Hockey
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Every four years, millions of Canadians watch women play hockey during the Olympics. Yet when it comes to regularly scheduled professional games, that audience dramatically decreases. In 2019, low audience numbers led to the closure of the Canadian Women's Hockey League and put the future of professional women's hockey in jeopardy. As with many women's sports, broadcasters argue the cost of production is too great, the value of airtime minutes too high to take the financial risk of televising the women's game without guaranteeing viewers for advertisers. Activists and athletes argue that the audience must be built through broadcaster investment. While scholars have examined hockey for its representational power to define national and gendered identities, there has been shockingly little research into the hockey audience. This mixed method audience reception study seeks to explore the viewing inconsistencies of the audience for women's hockey. Quantitative results from an online survey (n =685) provided data about viewing habits, perceptions and knowledge. This data informed qualitative focus groups (n = 25) that in turn provided contextualization and reasoning for the quantitative data. Mixed method analysis intersected grounded theory with audience reception, sport media, feminist studies and affect theory to identify a persistent discursive strategy framing women's hockey as
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2017
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