Football Fans, Lesbians Memes and Liminality: Exploring the Media’s Mobilisation of Ritual at the 2019 Women’s World Cup

Abstract

The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup was marketed as a transformative event for women’s sport and women’s empowerment more generally. Without the ability to attend the event itself in France, most people used traditional media and digital networks to watch and participate in the event. In a mediascape where digital networks allow anyone with a smartphone or internet access to challenge mainstream discourse, I ask how does traditional media mobilise liminal ritual events like the World Cup to reinforce their symbolic power, and how do people use digital networks to challenge it. This thesis uses two different ritual perspectives to understand the 2019 Women’s World Cup: as a liminal ritual event, that through media coverage also contributes to the mythical place of the media in society. I use encoding/decoding theory to understand negotiated co-authorship of the liminal ritual event by users of social media as both a challenge to dominant media discourse, that however also reinforces media power. The media pilgrimages of Australian fans to France exemplifies their investment in both the women’s empowerment and nationalism narratives that construct the liminal ritual event, but also demonstrates the inescapable nature of the media’s symbolic power.