The purpose of this study is to examine socio-cultural context in which Lotte Giants’ front resignation movement took place in the aspects of network social movement and understand the characteristics of front resignation movement and emotional dynamics the fans exhibited about the movement. To attain the goal, typical case sampling was employed. Lotte Giants’ 2014 front resignation movement was selected as a study case here, and snowball sampling was used to choose 7 Lotte Giants fans as participants. Data were collected through non-participant observation based on newspaper reports, online communities, and literature review adding to in-depth interviews conducted to the participants. Data went through analysis by transcription, writing memos, coding, categorization, and topic discovery.
According to the results, first, socio-cultural contexts in which front resignation movement took place include ‘baseball fans residing in Gudo (球都) Busan’, ‘evolution in the fandom for Korean professional baseball’, and ‘the emergence of network social movement’.
Second, the development of front resignation movement is characterized by ‘the structure of mobilization connecting the offline and online’, ‘mass media and one-person media’ simultaneous use’, ‘professional baseball fans transforming from prosumers to omnisumers’, ‘the formation and utility of collective intelligence’, ‘the empowerment of professional baseball fans’, and ‘the operation of synopticon’ briefly.
Third, about the emotional dynamics of fans exhibited in the front resignation movement, resistance was the main behavior of active participants, and resistance’s background feelings include anger, humiliation, and vengeance. Passive participants’ main behaviors are support and agreement towards resistance, and those behaviors’ background feelings include sadness, anxiety, and compassion. Non-participants’ main behaviors are standing by, avoidance, and adaptation, and their background feelings include fear, helplessness, and anger.
Advanced research on collective behavior found in pro sports has been mainly focused on violent mob behavior that players or spectators exhibit. However, today’s ICT development has evolved professional baseball fans into smart mobs, and collective behavior their exhibit is not any longer violent or illegal. According to the study results, collective behavior professional baseball fans exhibit nowadays has a form of social movement taking moderate as well as lawful strategies, for example, internet signature movement, one-person demonstration, or collective assembly. Professional baseball fans occupy both online and offline space to form public opinion and strive to let bystanders realize the justification and relevance of a movement and become potential participants. Such movement is distinguished from the types of old social movement represented by labor movement and is more like the purpose and forms of neo-social movement appearing after the 1970''s. Also, the development of front resignation movement using constant on/offline interaction reflects the characteristics of network social movement. In these aspects, this author intends to categorize today’s professional baseball fans’ collective behavior into social movement.
Also, this study attempts to understand professional baseball fans’ behavior from sociology of emotion being freed from the previous viewpoint of sociology grounded on reasonability. Sociology of emotion supposes human behavior is not composed of all reasonable decisions and behind any behavior, various feelings are positioned and work as driving force to draw out human behavior. In this perspective, this researcher has examined the dynamics of various feelings internalized in the behavior of fans participating in the front resignation movement and accordingly found that fans supporting an identical team may exhibit different behaviors according to the conversion of emotion each of the individuals gets to experience.