Social media has transformed the nature of sports fandom, accelerating the consumption of live events and offering new public platforms for athletes. In the face of hackneyed calls to "stick to sports," today's athletes have taken up a long tradition of using their on-field prowess as a platform for political expression.
Prepared by @yarimarbonilla and Max Hantel#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States, by Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa. American Ethnologist, volume 42, number 1, pp. 4-17.