74 Ahmad Aleian Civic Fandom

Fans as activists using Cristiano Ronaldo on TikTok to support a civic fandom.

COMM 3P18 (Seminar 1) Final Paper.

Student Name: Ahmad Aleian.

I will be delving into how Cristiano Ronaldo’s support for Palestine is being perceived by his audience. Specifically, exploring how fans engage with Cristiano on TikTok in response to his posts representing the people of Palestine since October 07, 2023. Fans are actively participating as produsers, taking a stance, and supporting Palestine by remixing videos, actively engaging not only as passive consumers but also as content creators by expressing solidarity with Palestine and tagging Ronaldo, they demonstrate their shared interests and support. I have chosen this topic because it is newsworthy and sheds light on how Cristiano’s fans navigate between civic fandom and celebrity fandom based on consumer reactions upholding support for Palestine. The war in the Middle East started on October 07, 2023, following an invasion by Hamas, resulting in severe damage as Israel and its military allies retaliated. This conflict has tragically cost the lives of Palestinian civilians, forcing many to flee their homes. Cristiano Ronaldo, a prominent player in the Saudi Pro League with Al-Nassr, holds significant influence with 614 million followers. Consequently, his audience engages by resharing critical events on platforms like TikTok, using the hashtag Cristiano to reach a wider audience. Therefore, audiences and fans perceive and utilize Cristiano Ronaldo as a symbol for aligning their support by being activists for Palestine with ties to civic fandom. Suggesting how fans interpret Ronaldo’s actions as an endorsement of their cause, linking personal interests to a broader geopolitical conflict. By analyzing fan engagement with Ronaldo’s posts regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, this paper seeks to understand how a celebrity’s stance can affect fan perception and activism on social platforms. Fans are creating a sense of community by being produsers creating new meanings from pre-existing videos of Cristiano before the conflict started, by making edits to the flags and commentary off Cristiano’s original videos. Most of the audience for these TikTok remixes are Pro-Palestine and support Ronaldo’s stance. However, there is a smaller portion of pro-Israeli which contradict the remixes on TikTok.

Upon reviewing TikTok content, a noticeable trend emerges from numerous videos under hashtags like #CR7, #CristianoRonaldo, #CR7Palestine. These videos connect Cristiano Ronaldo as a devoted advocate for Palestine, openly discouraging support for Israel’s military policies. Since joining Al-Nassr, a team owned by Saudi Arabia, Cristiano has garnered unprecedented support from people across the Middle East, amplifying his audience and fan base. Users leverage Cristiano’s image to align with their stance on the Middle East conflict by choosing to be produsers rather than to only consume the material presented. It is important to understand the importance of users becoming producers in the digital world today to inspire change, and empowering users to show their side in this Middle East war. Causing users to have a strong political voice as clearly indicated by O’ Boyle,

“If one approaches from the ‘producer’ side, media audiences appear empowered, active, and full of creative agency—as people making, creating, collaborating, and doing any number of things together. For example, as already noted, studies of fans of various kinds often paint a picture of diverse and knowledgeable actors collaborating, creating, and developing new skills and literacies, and sometimes even mobilising for political and social change. However, if one approaches from the ‘user’ side, media audiences appear considerably less empowered and not so very different from audiences of the broadcast era.” (O’Boyle, 2022, p. 154).

This is exemplified by a TikTok user @Was_ilat. In this video posted by the user it made the user become an active producer to such political content representation, what happens in the video is Cristiano accompanied by security, is approached by a reporter asking about his support for Israel (@Was_ilat, 2023). Cristiano responds by tossing the microphone into a lake, while the video labels the reporter as Israeli, by attaching an Israeli flag to the reporter (@Was_ilat, 2023). Furthermore, captioning Cristiano’s response as stating, “F**k Israel.” (@Was_ilat, 2023) Such fan-generated content serves as a declaration of solidarity, indicating support for the cause depicted. Additionally, the video’s background music, “My blood is Palestinian” by Mohammed Assaf, further emphasizes the pro-Palestine sentiment, catching the attention of viewers scrolling through TikTok and signaling the video’s alignment with supporting Palestinians. Clearly, we can examine through this posted video how comments spiked in support of Palestine. This is exemplified by people posting hearts, and positive comments aligning with their support to Palestine (@Was_ilat, 2023). This is critical to explain as we will further be examining how civic fandom ties to the audience that are pro Palestine using a famous player like Cristiano, to align their support in unity with the associated politics, displaying how the fans are becoming produsers,

“[Nowadays] the production of ideas takes place in a collaborative, participatory

environment which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge—frequently in an inherently and inextricably hybrid role

where usage is necessarily also productive: participants are produsers. (Bruns

2007: 4, my emphasis)” (O’Boyle, 2022, p. 154).

in support of being fans of Cristiano and using Cristiano to take a side in this Middle Eastern war, shaping Cristiano’s influence upon his fans resulting in videos being recreated to serve a political opinion.

The emergence of pro-Palestinian sentiments began growing since the onset of the Middle East conflict on October 7, 2023. Users across TikTok increasingly shared and edited videos depicting Cristiano Ronaldo purposefully avoiding shaking hands with an Israeli man. Although Ronaldo chose not to shake hands, that wasn’t the complete truth. According to News Checker, “Ronaldo wasn’t impressed with his runners-up medal after Juventus lost the Italian Super Cup to Lazio” (Kushel, 2023, Online). Despite the multitude of TikTok videos circulated, Cristiano never explicitly addressed his stance on Palestine, leaving room for interpretation. This ambiguity indicated a leaning towards supporting the idea rather than denying it, prompting users to reference Cristiano in their videos. In various TikTok posts, some users suggested that because Ronaldo didn’t disprove these allegations, it must signify his support for Palestine in the conflict. Cristiano’s followers expressed their interest in using him as a reference while expressing concerns about the war and their support for Palestine. The underlying notion is that users are propagating false information. As we all know, fake news spreads faster than authentic news. However, unless Cristiano explicitly addresses the reality of the issue, the perception that he supports Palestine will persist. The absence of denial from the player caused a surge in audience engagement with these misleading videos. Therefore, users are creating fake news and statements to work perceptions and change the discourse in their favour.

By observing how fans participate in supporting Palestine by aligning themselves with Cristiano, using him as a reference to endorse misleading content on TikTok, it’s crucial to recognize the influence of Cristiano’s fans on political dynamics, as suggested in the reading,

“A clear trend in fan studies is to focus on fandom as participatory culture, such as fan fiction (Barton 2014), and a common denominator is to regard fans as active and creative, which may explain the penchant for putting so much faith in fans and fan communities as forces for good in society, and potential instigators of social and political change” (Linden et al., 2017, p. 19).

This explains how fans can become participatory to truly support a political side by being active in the online world, this connects to our idea of how Cristiano fans are siding with Palestine by sharing, liking, and commenting; fans showing their support to the cause.

Miscaptioned images have been on the rise since October 07, 2023, ever since the conflict began. Fans and users used Cristiano’s previous videos from the past, such as videos posted before the war, to remake new meanings from Cristiano’s old videos. This is important to consider, because we must understand how fans are creating meaning from Cristiano by using Cristiano as a symbol to support a political side. Such example of this would be when the audience decided to step up their game by changing Cristiano Ronaldo’s support to the children impacted by the conflict in Syria, to change its meaning by putting text around the borders stating, “Cristiano Ronaldo Full Support Palestine” (Reuters Fact Check, 2023, Online). Moreover, making edits to cut off the rest of Cristiano’s speech where he stated,

“We know that you have been suffering a lot. I am a very famous player, but you are the true heroes. Don’t lose your hope. The world is with you. We care about you. I am with you” (Reuters Fact Check, 2023, Online).

The creators decided to align this to their pro Palestine support, by making edits to pre-existing videos of Cristiano. The original work was not created for the cause. However, the modified TikTok videos still reached many users on TikTok that thought it was Cristiano’s true work; me included. It was so great that I originally thought Cristiano was supporting Palestine and those were Cristiano’s videos, because they are great in details, and highly persuasive with the edits that the users modified. Below is an example of the video that captured many people’s attention on TikTok and some of the edits that the users made. Remember this video originally had nothing to do with Palestine, it was only intended for Syria’s children.

*(Image Retrieved from Reuters Fact Check, 2023, Online)

This audience behaviour to such video created of Cristiano ties down to the idea by Jenkins as mentioned,

“And all of this forces us to rethink Rosen’s claim that we are now “the people formerly known as the audience,” because whatever else networked audiences and fan communities are becoming, they are also still audiences, and much of the work they perform starts with the kinds of things audiences have historically done assessing and interpreting pre‐existing media representations or advocating for alternatives. Yet, we cannot adequately account for these audiences and their activities by looking only at the ways readers relate to texts or producers; we also have to factor in the ways they relate to each other, the ways their debates and cultural productions change the context in which media texts get received” (Jenkins, 2015, p. 24).

Such example we can see how the audience deciding to represent pro Palestine content on TikTok they were able to interpret previous videos of Cristiano and make meaning if Cristiano has supported other Middle Eastern Arab countries, then what is to stop Cristiano from supporting Palestine during this time, so the idea all started by interpretations and how the audience is relating to the presented texts: the videos posted by Cristiano. The audience connects and form discussions in the comment section of the posted video, making it a space for all users on TikTok to bring interpretation to light.

Moreover, we can see how Interpretation by the audience is created from the videos of Cristiano this form of interpretation formed by the audience is perceived as activist fandom. Activist fandom is,

“… defined as groups of fans fighting to see a change in the world using their popular

culture topic (Brough & Shresthova, 2012). These groups of fans are known as fandoms

(Hellekson, 2018) and have been found to be socially and politically active (Brough &

Shresthova, 2012)” (Fletcher, 2017-2023, Para. 1).

After examining most of the videos posted on TikTok it painted the bigger picture. Showing how fans are more so considered activists supporting Palestine in this Middle East war. It goes beyond just using Cristiano to support their side in this war. Rather, they stand by Palestine and produce heavy content supporting Palestine. Clearly, fans as activists can take on all shapes and forms with how they chose to produce content whether it is facts or modified information to create new meanings by using Cristiano as a symbol for support. Fans as activists tend to,

“… use fandoms to create political engagement, promote activism, and bring awareness to social justice issues” (Fletcher, 2017-2023, Para. 2).

Another example that has been criticized by pro Palestine supporters through TikTok is when Cristiano was playing on the national team Portugal up against Israel. Yet, Portugal lost that day, which Cristiano never handed over his shirt to the Israeli player on the opposite team. Generally, Cristiano would offer his shirt if another player reached for it, considering he had it off already. His fans decided to make meaning from this moment as indicated by Footynions,

“… lead many in twitterverse and social media to exclaim that his reluctance to exchange his shirt was a bold political statement on opposition of the oppression of Palestinians at the hands of Israel” (Footynions, 2013, Online).

This highlights on the idea of how fans as activists are creating meaning that support their political opinions as addressed by Fletcher. Although, that is not the true narrative considering,

“This video depicts him being intensely engaged in the match and also upset at a few calls. Perhaps, him not swapping his shirt has more to do with his own feeling towards the match and his teams’ recent lackluster performance than anything regarding in the Middle East” (Footynions, 2013, Online).

According to Footynions, which found other reasons that correlate to why Cristiano did not give his shirt to the Israeli player, could have been due to losing the match and has nothing to do with the political aspects of the middle east conflict (Footynions, 2013). Furthermore, most fans seem to disagree with this statement believing too many casualties happened with Cristiano and he never admitted to denying his support to Palestine even with the spike in fake videos displaying Cristiano’s heavy support for the people of Palestine.

Cristiano’s fans believe Cristiano supports Palestine and they are creating meaning from what they believe to be true of Cristiano, considering Cristiano has not denied any of the claims made. This form of audience becoming produsers is critical in this paper to understand why there is a large number of audience that have shared such fake videos, why are these videos so important to the audience and how can they create meaning from such videos to support their political opinions. It’s crucial to recognize that activism intertwines with civic engagement, as one complements the other, forming an integral connection between the two. As further noted,

“Traditionally, activism is understood to be intentional action to challenge existing

hegemonies and provoke political and/or social change…Fan groups may organize around real-world issues through extended engagement with and appropriation of popular culture content. Fan activism can thus also be understood as fan-driven efforts to address civic or political issues through engagement with and strategic deployment of popular culture content. Such efforts to change the status quo are “often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture” (Jenkins 2012)” (Melissa & Sangita, 2012, Para. 2.1-2.2).

Hence, fans strategically manipulate Cristiano’s TikTok videos by editing the original content, thereby altering its fundamental message, and generating new interpretations. This active fan engagement serves as a form of activism, aligning with their civic responsibility to advocate for change concerning the Middle Eastern political situation. Through these actions, fans showcase their stance and leverage Cristiano’s fame to signal their support, revealing their position to users who may favor the pro-Israeli perspective. The use of Cristiano as a symbol not only showcases his backing of pro-Palestinian groups within the ongoing situation but also facilitates the connection of these perspectives for others, highlighting that it’s not solely ordinary individuals but also influential figures like Cristiano who stand in support of Palestine. This approach sparks curiosity among the audience, prompting them to question and seek further information about the situation’s reality, fostering an informed audience base which is what the activists are trying to attain with this movement of leveraging Cristiano to contribute to changes in society by supporting a political side to this Middle East war and that side that the fans as produsers are trying to achieve is in support of the pro Palestine side.

In conclusion, the exploration of Cristiano Ronaldo’s perceived support for Palestine among his audience sheds light on the power dynamics within fandoms and the complexities of leveraging celebrity influence for political ends. This analysis has uncovered the transformation of fans into ‘produsers,’ actively reshaping and interpreting Cristiano’s content to align with their pro-Palestinian support. Through TikTok, fans have applied Cristiano’s image as a symbol of unity, generating content that promotes their political stance in the ongoing Middle East conflict.

The ambiguous nature of Cristiano’s responses or lack thereof has fueled fan interpretations, resulting in the circulation of misleading content. Despite the absence of explicit confirmation or denial from Cristiano himself, fans continue to assert their support for Palestine, molding and propagating their own narratives using Cristiano as a focal point. This occurrence highlights the distorting lines between producer and consumer roles within TikTok, showcasing how fan activism intertwines with civic engagement (Melissa & Sangita, 2012). By manipulating media content, fans strive to instigate change, prompt discourse, and attract attention to pressing global issues. Therefore, using Cristiano Ronaldo as a symbol to align their support for Palestine while engaging in activism, all within the realm of civic fandom. Considering how fans perceive Cristiano’s actions and utilize his influence as a means of advocating for their beliefs related to the Palestine cause.

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