ISSN : (Online)
DOI : https://doi.org/10.14377/JAPR.2012.3.30.89
A Collusive Cultural Drama – Transition of Street Support to a Nationwide Festival: 2002 World Cup Soccer Tournament
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Watching sporting events has a long tradition, and the consumption of sports games has become an important part of many people’s daily lives. Nowadays people not only witness a sporting event, but also actively participate in the event, organize supporting groups around it, and build a rich tradition on their own. While not appearing in consumer research studies, there is quite a bit of literature on sports fans., with studies focusing on why and how people become sports fans (Lever, 1995; Guttamann, 1986; Hornby, 2000; Queenan, 1998; Wann, Melnick, Russell, & Pease, 2001; McDonald, Milne, & Hong, 2002; Trail, Fink, & Anderson, 2003); psychological and sociological causes and outcomes of spectator aggressions (Wann, 1993; Coakley, 1998); and functions of sport fandom for individuals and society (Goodger & Goodger, 1989; Lancaster, 1997; Putnam, 1995). Along with these research trends, some researchers have also compared fan styles across countries (Giulianotti, 1991; Giulianotti, 1995). Because sports allow people to represent themselves or their social groups to others, sports fans of each country in international sporting events display their own national identity in which they are generated and sustained, even where there is a considerable social and cultural heterogeneity (Goodger & Goodger, 1989).
One of the most influential sporting events in the world is the World Cup soccer tournament that is held every four years. Almost all of the countries in the world participate in qualifying rounds and more than two billions of people worldwide watch matches in the main tournament. Once the main tournament of the World Cup is near, soccer fans around the world become riddled with excitement, making this event a prime opportunity to observe unique fan styles around the globe. European countries, for instance, have one of the oldest soccer traditions and display highly contrasting fan styles. For example, Scotland's ‘Tartan Army,’ the Dutch ‘Oranji,’ and the Danish ‘Roliigan’ have displayed sociable, and indeed gregarious, behavior that is best described as boisterous (Giulianotti, 1991; Giulianotti, 1995), and ‘Hooligan’ supporters sometimes engage in competitive violence with other fan groups (Armstrong & Harris 1991). On the other hand, during the 2002 World Cup the Korean ‘Red Devils’ displayed very unique supporting subcultures that were without precedent in World Cup history and that gained much praise in the international media. This paper is based on extended fieldwork with the Red Devils in Korea.
The Red Devils is an Internet-based community that was officially organized in 1997 by enthusiastic soccer fans in Korea. They usually got together and cheered the national teams at the stadium. However, extraordinary scenes in the streets were observed whenever the Korean national team played during the 2002 World Cup period. Various plazas in Seoul and other cities were inundated with huge crowds of Koreans wearing red shirts; it was estimated that more than 25 million Koreans joined these public gatherings to enthusiastically cheer for their national teams. This kind of scene had never been observed in Korea, nor had it been seen in any other countries. Soccer fans from most other counties support their national teams at the stadium, pubs, or homes, and sometimes supporters jump to the streets to celebrate the team's championship title. In contrast, huge crowds of Koreans gathered and painted most of the major streets red to show their support for the national team whenever it played in a match. During the World Cup period, the color red represented the character of the Korean people, representing their ‘resilient,’ ‘enthusiastic,’ and ‘dynamic’ spirit. Most Koreans were beside themselves with ‘Red Devils syndrome.’ The street support was even more significant in that it elevated Korean society and provided momentum for all Koreans to unite and feel pride in their nationality within a short period of time.
A considerable amount of research has shown interest in how and why people consume. Research methods such as ethnographic and phenomenological approaches have emerged to detail specific aspects of consuming. These studies have examined rich data on the consumption of diverse products and services such as baseball games (Holt, 1995), Harley Davison motorcycles (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), skydiving (Celsi, Rose, & Leigh, 1993), and river rafting (Arnould & Price, 1993). However, consumer research literature has not paid much attention to why and how fans consume. Holt's (1995) report on baseball spectators is something of an exception in that he offered a typology of consumption practices. Recognizing the lack of knowledge of sports fans' consumption experiences, this paper attempts to conduct in-depth studies regarding the passionate street support for the Red Devils.
At first, we joined the street support simply as soccer fans. As the street support became a national phenomenon, however, we decided to undertake systematic research. We employed a naturalistic research method for this project because such voluntary collective action of massive crowds was totally unexpected, and little is known about the process through which such a phenomenon occurs. While observing street supports for the Red Devils, we discovered several interesting research issues. First, we found it interesting to examine the consumption practice among participants. We believe what it means to be Red Devils should be explored in relation to the larger question of what it means to desire, cherish, admire, envy, celebrate, protect, and become allies with others. Second, these street support events in Korea provide us with an opportunity to examine the emergent formation of subcultures among participants. For example, in spite of the huge number of people spontaneously gathered on the streets, interesting patterns and norms of collective behavior emerged on the spot and were repeated over and over. Discovering how groups affect individual attitudes and behaviors, as well as how individuals affect group attitudes and behaviors, will be critical in understanding the dynamics of the street support phenomenon. Third, Red Devil street supports provide an excellent case to examine the transition process from street rallies to a nationwide festival. We observed very rapid diffusion of the street support behavior. Identifying factors that helped bring about such rapid diffusion will provide a meaningful contribution to the consumer research literature. Studying the evolution of participants' perceptions and attitudes toward the street support is also an important aspect that provides insights into how what began as a small group activity turned into a national festival.
We begin with a brief description of our emergent research agenda and provide a brief history of the Red Devils and street supports. We then discuss our findings in terms of two major themes: 1) emergent subcultures of street supports, and 2) the transition process to a national festival as a collusive cultural drama.
EMERGENT RESEARCH AGENDA: NATUALISTIC RESEARCH METHOD
Past research on consumer behavior has applied the naturalistic research method with increasing frequency (Belk, Sherry, & Wallendorf, 1988; Arnould & Price, 1993; Holt, 1995; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). In this approach, both data collection and the ultimate interpretation are guided by emergent design, in which the researcher builds an understanding of the phenomenon as it exists in its natural environment. The street support activities materialized as a spontaneous and unexpected social event. While little is known about such phenomenon, this paper attempts to employ naturalistic research methodology to explain the phenomenon itself and draw implications from it. The overview of the research method we employed is presented in Table 1.
<Table 1> Overview of Emergent Research Agenda
Overview of the Data Collection Method
This study employed various types of data collection methods in sequence: participant observation, media reports analysis, and depth interviews with participants and community leaders, including additional analysis. First, the authors engaged in direct observation of the individuals participating in the street support during the World Cup. At the friendly matches against England and France, we joined the street support as soccer fans. While observing the dynamic nature of the support, we decided to launch a research project and subsequently made more systematic observations for the following matches. By taking a participant observer role, we were able to look at the phenomenon from the participant’s perspective rather than from an outsider’s viewpoint. We conducted formal and informal interviews with participants from their site arrival to the post-game ceremony whenever interviews were feasible. We also tried to observe and interview various types of participants according to expertise (i.e., original, ‘hard-core’ members to first-time participants), degree of aggressiveness, sex and age. For each observation occasion, we made field notes and journal entries that served as the raw data for interpretation. Because of site conditions (i.e., noise), we could not record the interviews and thus jotted down skeleton notes during the interview that were flushed out soon after the events. We also took photographs and videotaped the key scenes of on-road support to supplement the field notes and journals. We made observations at eight matches where the associated research sites were Kangwhamoon intersections, City Hall plaza, University’s sports center, the terrace land on the river in Youido, and Jamsil Stadium.
Data collection and analyses were guided by emergent design (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The first step was to observe and record the phenomenon in detail. We then outlined our records and constructed guidelines for further data collection to test the emerging understanding. This iterative process continued through all phases. Interviews and observations were largely nondirective (Briggs, 1986), but later blended into more directed, semi-structured interviews. The focus of our data collection moved from peripheral cues, such as behavioral patterns, appearances, modes of dress and displayed emotions, in the beginning to in-depth issues, such as interactive, experiential, and symbolic aspects of the consumption, in the later stage.
Following the participant observation phase, we searched for secondary data, such as community reports and media documents on street supporters’ activities before, during, and after the World Cup. Document analysis refers to an integrated and conceptually informed method, procedure, and technique for locating, identifying, and analyzing documents for their relevance (Altheide, 1996). We collected community reports and members’ opinions at community sites, and interviewed original members of the community. We also collected primary documents related to the street support from newspapers, magazines, and TV newscasts. The purpose of the latter data collection effort was to understand the social views involved in the street support. We initially listed the origins, characteristics, and outcomes of street support as key items or categories and drafted a data collection sheet.
As the last step, we conducted depth interviews with the street supporters. We employed ethnographic interview methods (Spradley, 1979) because we still had questions about the results from previously collected data. In naturalistic inquiry, the process continues until conceptual categories are saturated and a point of redundancy is reached, making further data collection unnecessary. However, data from participant observations and media reports were limited because the social event had occurred during a relatively short period of time (one month). We felt the need to collect richer data on experiential aspects of the street support and on the symbolic and interactive aspects of group activities. These depth interviews were conducted for two months after the World Cup. Twenty graduate students who were taking the authors’ research methodology course conducted these interviews. Each graduate student conducted four to five interviews in a two week period. Every student was required to submit the interview reports (condensed account, expanded interview records, fieldwork journal, and analyses) after every interview. The authors then evaluated the information (domain, taxonomy, theme) in the reports and provided guidelines for the next interviews. We selected informants that would provide maximum variation with respect to sex, age, occupation, and number of participations.
Analysis of Data
We adopted a socio-cultural procedure of comparative analysis as our general framework (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in analyzing the data. Data collected from participant observations, media reports, and ethnographic interviews were analyzed in sequence. We synthesized the respective results and then developed overall themes. The analysis procedures in each phase can be outlined as follows.
First, the analysis of participant observations proceeded according to the constant comparative method, in which new data are constantly compared to prior interpretations as the researchers interact with each other and their environments. The involvement of two researchers added another useful dimension to the data analyses (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Individual interpretations of the data were advanced for discussion by either researcher, at which point the other developed counterarguments. These discussion sessions were conducted after each fieldwork episode and continued until the final results were summarized. We also employed member checks to enhance the richness of description and the trustworthiness of the researchers’ understanding as it developed. A member check involved providing all or portion of a final report to people who had served as informants on the project. Their commentary was sought as a check on the accuracy of the interpretations.
Second, we employed an ethnographic approach in which the study was guided by an initial set of categories and variables that were developed from the results of participant observations. However, other concepts were also allowed to emerge throughout the study. We followed the qualitative document analysis procedure suggested by Altheide (1995). We tested and refined the guideline sheet by collecting data from several documents and then decided to collect evaluative reports such as background, environmental factors, changes of participants' attitude and group dynamics, and contributions. We selected 64 article reports on these issues from major newspapers, magazines, and TV newscasts and summarized them by emergent text coding. Our data analysis consisted of extensive reading, sorting, and searching through our materials: comparing within categories, coding, and adding key words and concepts. We finally integrated the results.
Third, we employed the analysis procedures suggested by Spradley (1979). We asked the graduate students involved in the data collection to raise descriptive, structural, and contrasting questions at each interview, and then make domain, taxonomy, and componential analyses on their data in steps. We then evaluated their reports and guided further analyses. Students submitted the final reports containing the above-mentioned analyses, condensed and expanded field notes from each interview, and the major themes they discovered. We reviewed their reports and reanalyzed the condensed notes where necessary.
Finally we synthesized the findings from different research methods and developed the major themes on street support. We also collected additional data on newscasts and advertisements televised through national television networks to test our expectations of the effects of media and ads. Our final themes were constructed through a puzzle building process, with each theme from the different methods being treated like a puzzle piece. We sought to devise a conceptualization that would unite them all in a holistic fashion, and, as such, the themes were closely linked across different research methods.
RED DEVILS AND STREET SUPPORTS: AN INTRODUCTION
A Brief History
Korean soccer fans have a history of organizing communities for their favorite professional soccer clubs. As the Korean national teams’ matches at the 1998 World Cup qualifying round neared, these community members felt the need to organize a support group for their national team and thus launched a formal community, called ‘Red Devils.’ The name of the community was originated in the nickname given to the national teams by foreign news when the Korean youth national team advanced to the semi-finals at the 1984 World Youth Group Championship Games. The Red Devils community experienced a rapid growth, both in terms of social stature and size of the membership, during the 1998 World Cup qualifying matches. The appearance of ‘Ultra Nippon’ (a supporting group for the Japanese national team) added momentum to the interest in Red Devils among the mass of the Korean people. During the qualifying matches against Japan, both members and nonmembers of the Red Devils observed how Ultra Nippon fans cheered in perfect order and displayed deep passion for their team even in defeat. There has long been antipathy between Korea and Japan, and at the time they were fiercely competing for the championship of the Asia region. This rivalry between the two countries, which has roots tracing back to the Japanese occupation of Korea, led Koreans to feel the need for stronger and more systematic support for their team.
The size of the community in number of members increased during this period and the community prepared slogans, chants, body motions, flags, and cloth banners for more impressive cheering activities. At that time, their activities generally focused on supporting the national team at the stadium. Communications between members remained predominantly face-to-face and the Korean Soccer Association and the media began to pay attention to their activities at stadium.
The 1998 Word Cup soccer event in France also added momentum to the vitalization of this community. Soccer fever in Korea during this period attracted more attention to the Red Devils, and the size of the community increased further. The community reached a point where they began to organize group trips to France for all who were interested in cheering the team on site. However, since the majority of the members could not afford the time and expense to travel to France, the community suggested their members gather at a major intersection in Seoul to support the team together while watching the game on a large-screen television. This was the first instance of street support in Korea, but their activities did not linger long in people's memory because the national team did not record a win and failed to move to the second round. In spite of the relatively small number of participants at the street support, the membership in the Red Devils went up to about 20,000 and the community also organized its current structure.
As the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup matches approached, Koreans escalated their attention to the national soccer team again. Through several friendly matches that were broadcast on major national TV networks, most Koreans observed the Red Devils' systematic and enthusiastic support at the stadium and formed a sympathetic intimacy with them. As a result, the Red Devils stretched itself to a representative community that became acknowledged by most Koreans. Just before the main tournaments, the Korean national team had two important friendly matches against England and France, top ranked teams in the world; also at this time, the official number of Red Devils increased to about 120,000. Since seats for the Red Devils at stadium were limited compared to the size of the community, the community suggested that members without tickets gather at Kwangwhamoon intersection and support the team on the streets. In a match against England (May 21, 2002), around 5,000 Red Devils gathered together. In the next match against France (May 26, 2002), around 20,000 Red Devils joined on the streets. Because of the large number of supporters, the police had to allow them to sit on the main roads. Major TV networks and newspapers covered the Red Devils' street support as a new social phenomenon, and the street support became a matter of common interest. The number of street supporters during the first group match was estimated to be about 520,000. At this point, the street support became a national event – not just a community activity. With the increase in the number of street supporters, the sites for their activity also stretched all across the country. At its peak, the street supports were estimated to have had nearly 7 million Koreans involved. If we count the supporters at homes, restaurants, bars, and so on, it is not an exaggeration to estimate that practically all Koreans became Red Devils. Most Koreans were beside themselves with the ‘Red Devils syndrome.’
Typical Scenes
Typical Site: Seoul City Hall Plaza. Seoul City Hall Plaza was the epicenter of the street supports in Korea. It is located near Kwangwhamoon intersections, and an estimated crowd of more than 1 million jammed the City Hall Plaza and Kwangwhaduring during most of the national team’s games during the 2002 World Cup period (see Photo 1). At the center of the plaza, a special stage was installed for telecasting the game on a large screen. The stage was also used for pre-game performance displayed by specially invited entertainers. In addition to the main screen on the center stage, several other large screens were installed for the supporters’ convenience. During every national team’s game, supporters gather around the large screens. At the outer ring of the plaza, police controlled the traffic movement.
Types and Instruments of Cheering Acts. Major instruments of cheering acts were the mouth and hands, as used in slogan chanting, singing songs, and hand clapping. The favorite slogan and song in on-road support was “Dae-han Minguk,” which means Korea and “Oh Sure Victory Korea.” Many influential music critics and columnists have been quoted praising the rhythm of the slogans and songs. For example, they said that five beats of the slogan (“Dae/-/han/ Min/guk”) won popularity because it reflected the Korean traditional sentiment (from transcripts in a special program of MBC: “Replay of the Entertainment World”, June 6, 2002). The sequence of slogan and hand clapping was worthy of praise because the order made it easy and pleasurable for people to follow. Also, the chanting song (“Oh Sure Victory Korea”) was rearranged from the most favorite traditional song, called “Arirang.” Because of these characteristics, participants could easily memorize and follow the various slogans and songs. They could make very natural and creative body motions with the rhythm and, as a result, beginners could become experts in cheering within a day.
Red shirts and flags turned out to be important artifacts to heighten nationalistic feelings among supporters (from a special column of Jungang Daily News, June 20, 2003). The community selected red shirts because the national players usually wear a red uniform during games. Wearing red shirts gave participants the feeling of togetherness with the eleven players on the field. The community always brought large flags in order to stimulate participants’ patriotism.
EMERGENT SUBCULTURES OF STREET CONSUMPTION
The huge number of people (approximately 520,000) that gathered on the streets at the national team’s first group match was unexpected. However, interesting patterns of collective behavior emerged on the spot and were repeated over and over. As the street support evolved into a national event, it gave rise to a new subculture where people began to identify themselves with certain objects and consumption activities.
Structure: Classification of Participants
Participants of street support can be classified into the committed, the concerned, and the latent. These categories are based on two factors: the motivation of the individual for joining the event and the behavior of the individual throughout the event.
The committed group is comprised mainly of the original members of the Red Devils. They were deeply and personally involved with the community and had played a key role in the inner circle by organizing and diffusing the community. They demonstrated a commitment to the style and ideology with a self-sacrificing spirit since the birth of the Red Devils. They spent most of their time gathering supporters, preparing cheering instruments, and leading cheering acts whenever the national team had matches. These members also frequently got together to consolidate and diffuse the community, and they designed the current well-organized structure of the organization and institutionalized the cheering acts. The committed group acted as leaders among the massive group of street supporters and their motives for participating in the supporting acts were self-oriented, proactive, and intrinsic (i.e., directed toward the pleasures of doing so rather than toward the end itself).
The majority of official members are concerned participants with formal memberships in the group. They were not as personally involved as the committed members, but they acted in concert with the committed members. They were the soccer fans who had been interested in and followed a sport, team, and/or athletes and who personal attended sporting events (i.e., direct sports consumers; Wann, 1995). They regularly showed up at the designated sites announced through the community website and joined supporting acts enthusiastically. They believed that something should be done, but they were not personally involved enough to believe that it fell to them to decide what, when, and how actions should be carried out. Their roles were subordinated to and dictated by the committed members. They were motivated to be supporters because they could enjoy the excitement and arousal felt while supporting the teams, and also because the supporting acts provided a diversion from their daily lives. Their motives were still self-oriented, but more reactive and extrinsic (i.e., focused on the end) than the committed members.
The latent group is comprised of the majority of the participants who joined the street supports and acted as if they were members of the Red Devils. They were passive observers who witnessed the Red Devils’ supporting acts through some form of media, and some others that were not interested in the game or supporting acts. They displayed different motives such as curiosity and group affiliation, duty and so on. More than half of the informants who joined street supporters for the first time during this period described their participation as a task-oriented act or duty (i.e., to become a twelfth player or follow public spirit). Once they showed up on the streets, it did not take long for them to look like Red Devils and their supporting acts turned into a fun and playful act. They began to associate freedom, fantasy fulfillment, and escapism through the street supports. Although they were not formal members of the Red Devils, they were ready to become Red Devils whenever the national team played during the World Cup period.
Daily Routines and Emergent Group Dynamics
One of the most important characteristics of the street support in Korea was the instantaneous formation of group dynamics on the spot. At the very first match, participants created new group norms that were displayed throughout the gatherings that followed. This norm formation occurred in spite of the fact that the majority of the supporters at the first group match were first-time participants. In sum, the street support was an event lasting eight to nine hours from start to finish, with phases including arrival and gathering, performance on a special stage, main game, and after-game ceremonies.
Stage 1: Arrival and Uncertainty. When the participants left for the site, they experienced subtle and complex moods involving hope and apprehension. Some of the supporters had confidence in the first victory and others worried about another loss in the main tournament. Some of the supporters who wanted to occupy a location that was close to the center stage and the main screen arrived at sites four to five hours in advance of the main game. Once they arrived at the site, they sat on the road and chatted with companions or strangers. They could reserve the seats only by sitting on the road for the whole day. The major topics of conversation were the prospects of the following game, evaluation of the past game, performance of the players, and so on.
The site was usually packed full with supporters two hours before the game kickoff. Overwhelmed by the huge crowd, the participants felt some thrill and uncertainty from this new atmosphere. When uncertainty sets in, groups try to figure out what to do next. Yet, having no idea what to do next produced a sense of urgency that resulted in a psychological state of confusion, agitation, and yearning for direction. The agreement and solidarity of collectivities does not suddenly appear; it takes place during milling, the process whereby individuals behave in a restless manner (Turner & Killian, 1957). This sense of urgency led them to rely on others for cues regarding ‘proper’ behavior. They looked around to see what other people were doing. As predicted by symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934; Blumer, 1969), people interpreted their surroundings and based their behavior on the meanings they attributed to those surroundings. They used other people as a source of information (Sherif, 1936), letting other people's words and actions guided their own thoughts and actions. Through circular interactions, they were simultaneously imitating and reinforcing each other's behavior. Although at first they felt out of place within the huge crowd, they gradually adapted themselves to the site’s mood.
Stage 2: Special Stage and Unity. Two hours before the kickoff, the Red Devils executives prepared a special stage for newcomers. Popular singers were invited to the special stage. They sang their hit songs, as well as cheering songs (e.g., “Oh Sure Victory”), and participants danced naturally to the music. During these special stage performances, the group quickly developed new norms in the face of confusion. The emergent norm on the spot was ‘unity’ (Bender, 1978). Two factors contributed to such unity within the massive crowd.
First, the dream of winning was a decisive factor in the consumption of street support and was closely linked to “we-ness” and patriotism. People were very anxious for the first win and for the team to advance to the second round. The first win in the main tournament was the irreducible minimum of their demand. Irrespective of their motives for joining, most participants felt as if they “sort of knew each other” at some level, and this allowed them to easily interact with each other because they shared a common dream of a first win. Most informants mentioned that they wanted to contribute whatever they could to achieve the victory and this enhanced their enthusiasm. Most participants wanted to create an impressive spectacle of well-coordinated, collective cheering because, at that point, they believed their enthusiastic supports would provide the players with additional energy. They all shared a strong wish-fulfillment belief. Smelser (1962) notes that wish-fulfillment beliefs reduce ambiguity by producing what is believed to be an effective solution to the problem, or by predicting some sort of a positive event. Wish-fulfillment beliefs and behaviors were observed before and during the game.
“I thought our team would win for sure. Whenever I had a doubt, I joined the support even more enthusiastically to forget.”
Second, the original members of the Red Devils played a key role in guiding the crowd. In between performances, the original members of Red Devils came on stage to demonstrate and practice various cheers, team songs, chant slogans, and appropriate body actions for the benefit of the crowd. Such events on and off the stage helped to transform the participants from passive spectators to enthusiastic supporters. The committed members also devised smart catch phrases and cheering tools for the latent participants to express symbolic meaning and prepared a well-framed script. They appealed to common sentiments that were soon shared by the latent group. As the crowd followed the lead of celebrities and Red Devils members, they began to reach a social and cultural consensus. For example, a woman who reluctantly accompanied her husband followed the group-mediated activities only because she felt she had to. She said that cheering activities were awkward at first, but it did not take long for her to become an active participant.
Stage 3: Main Game and State of Non-consciousness. Once the game started, participants enthusiastically supported the national team. They felt strong emotions (e.g., extreme excitement or tension) depending on the team’s performance in the game. Most participants fell into a state of group consciousness, not only because they were totally absorbed in the games but also due to the influence of group dynamics. LeBon (1982) suggests that people become part of a psychological crowd when they feel invincible and anonymous. Along similar lines, Miller and Dollard (1942) note that crowd stimulus is stronger and more important when members experience interstimulation, proximity, and large size. The site characteristics reinforced this crowd stimulus, creating a ‘flow experience’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1985), a stage of total involvement where one moment “flows” holistically into the next without “conscious intervention.” Informants were united in describing the supporting acts as one of total absorption that led them to an extreme sense of rapture and involvement. This kind of experience is highly satisfying and self-fulfilling and leads the participants to feel delight beyond expression (Csikszentmihalyi, 1985). Most of the participants also expressed their desire to add to the level of support if possible.
“How can I describe it? You will never know. It is beyond expression. It is like a catharsis. It totally removed all the frustrations in me. I felt like I was flying in the sky. I will never forget it. I will definitely come again next time.”
According to Locher (2002), collective behavior is any event during which a group of people engages in unusual behavior (“unusual in the sense that it is unexpected, not what people normally do in other settings”). Csikszentmihalyi (1990) also suggests that flow experience is the manifestation of a person's true self, unconstrained temporarily by self-awareness. Some of the informants mentioned that they were surprised by their own behaviors during the event. The state of non-consciousness led the participants to express another side of themselves (i.e., the inner self) that was perhaps suppressed in daily lives. For example, women tended to be much wilder in expressing their feelings than men, even though many had no interest in the national team's soccer games before the World Cup. This is a significant deviation from the norm because women typically do not express strong emotions in public places in Korea, especially during sports games. A female participant reflects on her experience:
“I found myself shouting loudly and holding the hands and shoulders of people next to me. I was both surprised and delighted to be acting in a way that I could never have in my life.”
Stage 4: Spontaneous Celebration and Orchestrated Anarchy. The crowd's support continued until well after the game. They celebrated the victory by first forming small groups with strangers around them, singing and dancing arm-in-arm. Some of them continued to march on the streets and others dropped in for drinks at pubs and bars. This spontaneous celebration led people to behave in a manner that was totally out of line with their public image. Some of them attempted to march in the middle of the road, and some even cheered on the roofs of cars and buses. At that moment, they seemed to feel that they were permitted to behave in a way that was not acceptable in any other setting. They reached a state of collective rapture.
Surprisingly, however, a vast majority of the crowd did not engage in destructive or irresponsible behaviors. On the contrary, under the leadership of the Red Devils members, the participants exhibited orderliness and a strong sense of community. For example, the Red Devils members took the lead in cleaning the streets during and after the games and the crowd followed voluntarily. The community members provided cues for appropriate behaviors after the game. The crowd was also conscious of the gaze of foreigners' eyes. As treating guests with the utmost care and concern is one of the core values of the Korean culture, they were eager to be seen as a good host. The group norm triggered by the Red Devils seemed act as a powerful force in controlling the crowd’s behavior. This was particularly true in the heightened state of group-awareness that the participants found themselves in. Whatever minor incidences that occured during the first match disappeared in subsequent games; post-game celebrations became more peaceful and orderly. Exemplary conduct of the Red Devils members and the desire for national dignity as a host country seemed to constrain the temptation to engage in more deviant acts.
Core Values
The typical analysis of cultural content begins by identifying the core values of the social group. We discovered several dominant values that street supporters had explicitly manifested.
We-ness. The dominant value in the ethos of the street support was “we-ness.” We found several indications of this value. First, everyone on the roads became intimate with each other. They interacted with each other freely. Even strangers looked and behaved like old friends while cheering (i.e., shaking hands, dancing arm-in-arm, hugging with strangers). Second, huge crowds of Koreans on the streets, at the stadium, and in bars, restaurants, and cafes, became one; their actions and motions were very natural and in perfect harmony. Irrespective of age, profession, and gender, they all wore red t-shirts and cheered enthusiastically with chanting, motions, sequence of slogans, and hand clapping. Third, people on the streets were psychologically attached to the Red Devils, irrespective of formal membership. It is quite unique for such a high level of we-ness or unity to emerge on the spot within a short period of time. The spontaneous unification of massive groups without any prior planning was beyond imagination.
Heroism. Rather than being mere spectators, the participants took an active role in the games. It was as if they themselves were actually playing the game alongside the 11 players on the field. A soccer specialist, the team manager, and the press unanimously mentioned that the true hero of the miracle (i.e., the team's advancement to the final four) was the Red Devils. Informants described the street support experience as one of total absorption that provided them with not only thrills and excitement, but also a sense of heroism. We traced the source of this heroism to volunteerism. The committed group organized the street support on a voluntary basis. The community of Red Devils maintained its nonprofit orientation even after it gained nationwide attention. The concerned members carried out their responsibilities actively and joined the cheering acts for their own pleasure, and the latent volunteerism became part of the Red Devils. In the minds of every supporter, the street support symbolized voluntary participation. Each participant could become a hero of this new social movement because everyone did it of their own accord.
National Pride and Patriotism: Changed Attitude toward the Nation. ‘Koreanism’ was an important value throughout the street support. Koreans are normally accustomed to treating their guests politely and hospitably. As the host of the World Cup however, the Koreans were looking for something more impressive to show to the visitors. As the national team showed improved performance in several matches, the street support gained a nationwide interest and Koreans realized that this could turn out to be something to show their visitors. There had been no precedent for this kind of a major spectacle in Korea with respect to number of participants, their deep passion, and the natural unification expressed by a massive group in a public setting. Koreans marveled at the perfect harmony that the massive crowd displayed and were proud of the grand sight they created. Some of the informants mentioned that nothing else existed in their world, and in that moment itself, no sense of time existed and there was only a kind of holistic oneness that made them feel good and somehow changed. They became more proud of being Korean than ever before, and the more pride the Koreans felt, the more aggressively they joined the street support. Further, the more attention they captured from the foreign press, the deeper the national pride became. For example, a Korean resident in Japan said that she did not want to disclose that she was Korean to her neighbors before, but she did let her neighbors know during World Cup period.
This pride allowed Koreans to naturally express their patriotism. In the past, the government urged people to display national loyalty in public (e.g., playing the national anthem in the theaters). However, such directed efforts were not very effective and public expressions of patriotism were often regarded a awkward. However, Red Devils cheering in the street repeatedly cried, “Republic of Korea” and “Go Korea,” and these key slogans fueled the festive national spirit. They also did not hesitate to bring flags and use them as body decorations to show their patriotism. The street support had changed people's attitude toward their national flag – from solemnity to intimacy and public pride. Through the street support, the Koreans confirmed their deep patriotism and learned how to express it.
“In the past, painting our flag on my body or wearing it as a cape were unnatural both personally as well as socially. But now, it is very natural. I always thought that flags were ‘out there,’ but now it stands with me as a friend.”
Maturity. As the games progressed and the size of the crowd grew, the maturity of the crowd’s behavior seemed to grow with it. They felt emotionally overwhelmed and captivated by the warmth, consideration, and acceptance of others. Participants' sentiments and actions became contagious to the extent that they were willing to sacrifice personal interest (e.g., enduring uncomfortable environmental conditions) in the name of collective interest (e.g., folding their umbrella under the rain for the sake of others). The stadium and the streets were full of chanting cries throughout the game, but they remained silent during the play of the opponent team’s national anthem. The crowd did not boo the players’ mistakes, but rather, they cried, “No problem.” They did not speak ill of the umpire who seemed to make unfavorable decisions against the national team. Although they reached the utmost excitement in victory, they somehow maintained order among chaos. This picture was quite a contrast to the behaviors displayed during the civil democratization parade against the government in the 1980s. In fact, this was the most socially desirable display of group behavior in Korea's modern history. Through their street support, the Koreans seemed to acquire a mature civil spirit.
On-road Supports as Ritual-like Activities
The street supporters displayed ritualistic aspects (Rook, 1985). All movements and actions were carefully scripted on the spot and the event sequence was repeated over time. Street supports described in this study illustrate general processes of ritualization as flexible and strategic ways of acting. The examples discussed here can be loosely organized into formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacred symbolism, and performance – all frequently cited as characteristics of ritual-like activities (Bell, 1997).
We observed formality in street supports. As described in daily routines, formality appeared to be, at least in part, the use of a more limited and rigidly organized set of gestures (e.g., slogan chanting, singing songs, and hand clapping) and a “restricted code” of communication or behavior. This kind of formality was very effective in promoting a loose social acquiescence among participants by communicating complex socio-cultural messages about negotiation of identity and position in every site. Also, participants had a great deal of freedom in ritual-role enactment. As the events were repeated, their acts became more aggressive and voluntary. They knew more precisely when, how, and what to display.
“With each additional appearance, I learned when I was supposed to chant a certain slogan, sing a certain song, and what the appropriate body motion accompanying the acts was. Once I became familiar, my participation became much more enjoyable.”
The attempt to make a set of activities appear to be identical to or thoroughly consistent with older cultural precedents can be called “traditionalization.” Gongs and waist drums had been key instruments and red-shirts with flags were traditional costumes from the birth of Red Devils. Also, the street support displayed the characteristics of invariance. It had a specific script and it was repeated over time. Daily routines such as site reservation, special stages, the main games, and additional ceremonies were a matter of near-perfect repetition of activities from an early period of World Cup main tournament. Moreover, the representatives of the Red Devils community devised creative and eye-catching scripts at each match; special stage events before the game, production of wave motions with an extra large flag during the national anthem, massive display of the daily catch phrase in the stadium right after the start of the game, all occurred in sequence at each game.
Activities that generate and express the sacred significance of key symbols like the flag were considered to be ritual-like. The red shirts and the national flags played the role of ritual artifacts. When used in a street support context, the red shirts and flags communicated specific symbolic messages, such as a twelfth player, and patriotism, which are integral to the total experience. Most participants voluntarily began painting the Korean flag on their body or wearing it as a cape. By doing so, they wanted to express their love for their country and their sense of national pride.
Street cleanings after the game were good examples for rule- governance. After the first group match, some excited participants climbed on the roof of buses and cars parked nearby, but these scenes were not observed later. The violent chaos was barely held in check by complex codes of orchestration. With the creative leadership of the committed Red Devils members, the ritual acts of the supporters were aimed at clearly defined audiences: foreign visitors and game viewers worldwide. The participants as a group were conscious of their target audiences, and these audiences played a critical role in inducing them to display desirable behaviors such as street cleanings.
A COLLUSIVE CULTURAL DRAMA: TRANSITION PROCESS TO NATIONAL FESTIVAL
In recent years, much attention has focused on what ritual has in common with theatrical performances, dramatic spectacles, and public events. A festival is a public celebration that conveys, through a of activities, certain meanings to participants and spectators. As we will demonstrate, the street support during the World Cup period possessed a decidedly syncretic nature and may be usefully viewed as a public carnivalesque festival (Kates & Belk, 2001). Street supporters also showed many carnivalesque elements including ritual-like supporting acts, memorial ceremonies, and improvisatory parades.
We reviewed field notes from participant observations and depth interviews, and conducted additional analyses on media reports to analyze transitional process from an emergence of street support to a nationwide festival. After synthesizing the results, we concluded that the national festival was invented through three stages: incubation, social contagion, and invention. We outlined an overview of street support diffusion by stage in Table 2, and more descriptions by stage follow.
<Table 2> Overview of Roadside Support Diffusion
Incubation Period: Escalating Attention to World Cup Event
As the 2002 World Cup tournament drew near, the national soccer team regained attention from the people. Koreans were thirsty for a first win at the World Cup tournament because their team had appeared in five previous World Cup tournaments and played 15 matches without a win. The World Cup history also added to the anxiousness (the hosting country had never failed to advance to the second round). Koreans were anxious to keep their self-respect by realizing at least the first win. In some cases, teams with long histories of poor performance still attract millions of spectators each year (e.g., the Chicago Cubs MLB franchise). In line with this aspiration, several organizations announced various types of sponsorships for the national team. For example, Hyundai Motors Inc. offered a reward of medium and large sized cars to the players and the coaches if the team advanced to the second round. Following this kind of nationwide aspiration, the country’s President, Kim Dae-Jung, also heightened the morale of the team by announcing that he would ask appropriate government officials to deliberate ways to provide players exemption from military services in case of the team's advance to the second round.
Outstanding team performance against England and France played an incubating role in diffusing street supports. The community reinitiated street support for the friendly match against England. They asked members without tickets to the stadium to gather at Kwangwhamoon intersections. The number of participants was about 5,000. The national team's even game with England raised the morale of the supporters and led to more attendance at the team's next match. The number of participants at the match against France was about 20,000. As more people gathered, the participants occupied the center of the intersections instead of pavement and bubbled with high spirits. Their supporting acts got more enthusiastic.
As the number of participants was increased during this period, major TV networks and newspapers competed to cover the Red Devils' street supports as a new social episode. As you can see in Table 3, major national television networks and newspapers began to broadcast the figures for street support during this period. Also soccer experts began to deliver positive evaluations toward the national team's potential and estimated that the team's first win was feasible. As the main tournament games were ahead, it was forecasted that huge crowds would gather at Kwangwhamoon intersections for the national team's first group match. The street supports got attentions from most Koreans and were ready to become to a nationwide event.
<Table 3> Overview of Media Coverage
Social Contagion Period: Reaching A Critical Mass
The official number of Red Devils was 120,000 before the World Cup event, but it was estimated that 520,000 joined the street supports at Seoul City Hall Plaza for the team’s first group match, indicating that most of the participants were not official members of the Red Devils. After the first group match, street supports spread like viruses (Gladwell, 2002). A crucial concept in understanding the social nature of the diffusion process is the “critical mass.” The critical mass occurs at the point at which enough individuals in a system adopt a behavior (here, street support) as an innovation so that its further rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining (Rogers, 1995). From the second group match, sites for street supports stretched to the various streets and squares of Seoul and other major cities. At the third group match, the number of participants increased to about 3 million and people gathered at hundreds of sites at major cities.
Although joining the street support was enjoyable, it was sometimes laborious and troublesome. For example, staying on the road for more than 8 hours during a hot summer day tested the endurance of most people. The availability of drinking water and access to restrooms were limited in the presence of the massive crowds. So, what did bring more than 25 million people to the streets? We found several factors that combined to make the street support spread in popularity among Koreans during this period.
Individual Motives. We found several individual motives for joining street supports. First, many societal issues leading up to the World Cup had generated tensions and frustrations for Koreans. The political corruption, scandals and uncertain economic prospects had left them feeling gloomy. The younger generation was burdened by a highly competitive university entrance examination and employment pressure. Women were feeling overwhelmed by housework, and working men were being subjected to rigid organizational cultures. Wann (1997) suggests that the use of the escape motive may be prevalent during personally difficult or stressful times. Several informants interviewed confirmed that the deep-rooted motivation to join the street support was to seek refuge from these gloomy daily lives.
Second, public spirit among Koreans was another motive. Koreans were ready to do something because they perceived the hosting of the World Cup as a national event. The World Cup provided the momentum for Koreans to revive their sense of collectivism, one of the latent cultural traits of the Korean people (from a special column in Jungang Daily News, June 24, 2003). As the event approached, the government and various social organizations launched a variety of campaigns to encourage the society to be hospitable to foreign visitors and exercise restraint in driving their cars in order to reduce traffic jams in the city. This created a social atmosphere that stimulated public spirit and drove people to feel and act as hosts of this national event. Aided by exciting chants and songs, the street events awoke the latent cultural traits that instill a strong sense of self-identity and togetherness among the participants. Although Koreans are often individualistic and operate in closed networks in their everyday lives, they showed strong group cohesion at the crucial moment. The gold collection movement during the 1996 economic crisis is an excellent example of group cohesion where a large number of Koreans voluntarily sold their gold even at lower than market prices to help enhance the nation's gold holdings.
The desire to compete with Japan, the World Cup co-host, further stimulated supporters’ self-respect. Due to the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1897 to 1945, there was a collective desire among Koreans to not lose in a competition against Japan. As a result, Koreans felt the pressure to prove to the world that they could host such a big event more successfully than Japan. As the street support in Korea became a worldwide news topic, Koreans began to realize that it could serve as something to show foreign visitors and consequently joined the street support. Koreans also wanted to keep their self-respect by realizing at least the first win and advancing to the second round. This wish led Koreans to take an active role in the game as a ‘twelfth player’ (Holt, 1995: see concept of assimilating). Koreans were ready to do something to help their team achieve their first win and realized that joining the street supporters could be a perfect platform.
Third, many individuals became involved in the event for the entertainment value it provided. Koreans learned a new behavior by observing street supporters in person or via the mass media (Bandur,a 1977). Furthermore, Koreans considered that participating in street support at World Cup events would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, thereby increasing the attractiveness of participation. They thought that this kind of event in the streets would not be available in the future. As these dreams came true one-by-one (i.e., the first win, movement to the second round), the street support not only grew in intensity, but the mass media also depicted the on-road support as a grand sight of people enjoying the experience. Video clips accompanied by such descriptions soon stimulated the curiosity of the masses and eventually led passive observers to rush to the streets. The entertainment value made people consume street support in a group environment. On the national team’s match days, we repeatedly observed that friends or peers got together at a designated site and husbands gathered with their wives and kids. Koreans seemed to view street supports as being similar to other recreational pursuits, such as going to a theme park like Disneyland. This kind of group affiliation motive naturally led to the festive mood in later stages.
“How exciting and funny the street supporters looked! They were in a festive mood. Joining street support seemed to be worth more than visiting Everland [a popular theme park in Korea].”
Community Leadership. From several points of view, the core organizers of the Red Devils community exhibited outstanding organizational skills and leadership. First, when they encountered the surprisingly large crowd that gathered on the streets at the team’s first group match, they responded swiftly by adding extra gathering sites for the next games. They were then able to manage the street support all over the country utilizing their region-based organizational structure. Second, they made careful preparations for new participants. For example, they arranged for special facilities and manpower to offer the cheering exercise sessions. Third, they developed creative catch phrases at each game to arouse the spirit of the cheering crowd: for example, “Again 1966” symbolized North Korea's advancement to the quarter finals of the 1966 World-Cup; “Dreams Come True” celebrated the Korean team's advancement to the second round; and “Pride of Asia” signified that Korea was the only Asian country to advance to the quarter finals. The repertoire of exciting cheering rhythms also added to promoting the “we-ness” among the participants. Fourth, they set a standard of behavior for the massive crowd by acting as a role model in cleaning the streets and maintaining order. Such leadership reinforced the cohesion among the participants and the resulting site of a massive crowd cheering loudly but in an orderly fashion soon caught the mass media's attention.
Role of Media. Undoubtedly, the mass media played a key role in projecting the Red Devils into national consciousness. Empirical studies of agenda setting typically have concluded that mass media have a greater impact on people's perceptions of the collective salience of issues than on the personal salience of issues to individuals themselves (McLeod, Becker, & Byrnes, 1974; Becker, McCombs, & McLeod, 1975). The first encounter of the general public with the street supporters was through the telecasts of TV networks. As the participation spread through the population, major TV networks, newspapers, and magazines began to allocate more time and space to cover the scene. Encountering more news concerning street supporters, people perceived supporting acts as having greater personal importance to them. Some informants mentioned that they could not help but participate after watching these unprecedented scenes.
We conducted additional analyses on media reports to test our expectations of the effects of mass-mediated reports. Data were obtained through content analyses of selected newscasts before and after the main tournament period. We selected daily news programs at 9:00 pm provided by three major national television networks, which provided the most primetime coverage. We counted the number of seconds as well as frequencies of lead stories on daily national news programs allocated to telecasting the World Cup event. We classified the news into general topics about the World Cup (e.g., preparation of event, outcomes or forecasts of the matches, and movements of players) and specific scenes about on-road supporters. We thought it useful to distinguish between lead and other stories, because lead story coverage may be more sensitive to real-world conditions and may exert a stronger impact on viewers’ perceptions of the issues. The results are summarized in Table 3.
As shown in Table 3, major TV networks reported various types of news about the World Cup event even before the team's friendly matches, and they increased their reporting times after two friendly matches. For example, every network televised news of the World Cup event for two minutes and 23 seconds and for about six to eight minutes after the two friendly matches. It is also noted that the World Cup event was a lead story once every four or five days after two friendly matches. On the other hand, the telecasts about the scenes of street supports appeared after the friendly matches against England and France, and the length of televised time continuously increased along with the changes in public attitudes toward the street support. It is also noted that scenes of street supporters more frequently occupied the position of lead story in the news.
Taking other media's massive coverage of street supports into account (e.g., newspapers, magazines), it is likely that people's perception of street supports was shaped by the mass media. Although we cannot provide direct evidence for the causal relationship between media coverage and participants' perception of the supporting acts, we could find indications in our field notes that nonmembers got motivated to be a part of the crowd after observing the scenes from TV for the first time, and thereafter street supports became a good topic of conversation in daily lives among Koreans.
Reflections from Advertising. Corporate team sponsorship advertisements played another important role in fueling the Red Devils syndrome. Expecting great interest in the World Cup, several major companies prepared advertisements that depicted the World Cup fever and aired those before and during the event. These advertisements depicted various cheering routines, portrayed both the players' and supporters' deep emotions toward the game, and encouraged the manager of the national soccer team to show outstanding performance.
We also conducted additional analyses on the advertisements televised through national networks at major television stations from April to June. Among 431 brands that ran the ads during that period, 55 brands had content related to World Cup events. Total airing times for ads by these 55 brands from April to June were more than 20 hours. Among these ads, the major focus was on scenes related to soccer games (52.5%); supporting acts (24%); national soccer team members, such as players and directors (13%); and other topics (10.5%). For example, ads for speed 011 and KTF (two leading brands in mobile phone market) depicted supporting acts in a fascinating manner and repetitively stimulated people to transform their psychological needs and aspire to become street supporters. Pollay (1986) suggests several reasons for advertising's effects, including that it is pervasive, repetitive, and professionally developed, and it appears in many models and media and reinforces the same or similar ideas relentlessly. The advertisements helped people become familiar with the cheering routines. These routines in turn activated the Korean’s cultural traits of public spirit, and inspired them to join in on the fun of supporting their team.
Social Contagion Period: Communitas
Van Gannep (1909) has shown that all rites of passage or transition are marked by three phases: separation, marginality, and re-aggregation. Likewise, we could observe similar transition among participants. There were clear boundaries between original members of Red Devils (i.e., the committed and the concerned) and the latent (i.e., nonmembers) before the main World Cup event. Some of the original Red Devils mentioned boundaries between the community of Red Devils and the rest of the world in terms of their attire, skillfulness, and passion in cheering activities in the beginning. For example, behavioral patterns of the Red Devils looked excessive and extreme early on, but later people found them to be attractive and natural. Original members also felt heightened self-esteem and superiority over others from performing their cheering activities powerfully in the streets. However, it did not take long for the latent to become active Red Devils rather than just spectators. As the street supporters were passing over the liminal phase (i.e., threshold) in terms of size, enthusiasm, social concern, and so on, members of the latent group were betwixt and between: they never felt fully comfortable at home without becoming part of the active supporters. Most participants enjoyed the street support in excited, enthusiastic, and almost rhapsodic manners. It is a shared feeling wherein the participation and enthusiasm of others enriched the overall emotional quality and texture of the event. In this sense, the Red Devils displayed the ideal that Tuner (1969) described as communitas: “society as an undifferentiated homogeneous whole, in which individuals confront one another integrally, and not as ‘segmentalized’ into statuses or roles” (p. 177).
Our field notes indicate that participants felt “a shared feeling” that transcended the mundane of everyday life (Belk, Sherry, & Wallendorf, 1989). For example, the street supports tore down the generation gap between millions of parents and their children. Parents and children (or more generally, young and old generations) got together on the streets and expressed their inner emotions without being conscious of the other. Through this process, they attained new perspectives toward each other. The young generation proved that they had a mature respect for the tastes of others, and they also showed cultural sensitivity. The older generation, who had lived through the industrialization and democratization period of the country, had often criticized the young generations' tendencies toward individualism, lack of endurance, and disorderliness. The street support experience changed this view. They found that the young generation could be considerate of others and show endurance, group orientation, and patriotism. The older generations found positive aspects of the younger generations, and the latter gained confidence to express themselves with dignity.
“I had such a good time. I did not even realize that my neck ached. Thanks to the World Cup, I had heartfelt conversations with young people. I can now see them from a different perspective. I have confidence in them now. Before, it seemed that we were living in two separate worlds.”
Korean society also found a new outlook on women. Traditionally, women have been passive in expressing their opinions or inner emotions and were accustomed to being behind their husbands in public. However, what they displayed on the streets was quite the opposite. While most women were not interested in soccer and very few even knew the rules prior to the World Cup, a large number of them joined the street support. Moreover, they turned out to be even more enthusiastic and wild than their male counterparts. They also decorated themselves in a more liberal manner than men. The street support provided women the opportunity to show their potential energy and to play active roles in public settings. The World Cup had also helped break down the walls between neighbors. The cheering as a neighborhood festival helped people rediscover their neighbors. Most of the residents in apartment complexes did not know each other well. Busan Daily News reported that at the Hyundai apartment complex, 1,500 families gathered in the basement parking lot to cheer the Korean team. Women prepared beverages and cookies, and the local neighborhood soccer team heightened the merriment by banging on drums and clanging on small gongs. This seemed to be one of the first instances where the residents got together without a specific issue of self-interest.
Along with this transition, we could find that the media changed the focus of the news coverage. During the incubation period, the media had reported the event simply as an episode and focused on peripheral cues of supporting acts such as size of the crowd, site figures, costumes, and so on. As the number of participants continued to increase and they displayed more refined behaviors, the media shifted their focus to environmental and interpersonal factors of this new phenomenon. To investigate these changes more precisely, we reanalyzed the contents of 9:00 pm news programs during each stage. As a result, the news was further classified into cheering scenes (i.e., simple relay of the scene, comments on peripheral cues, such as crowd size, site figures); cheering cultures (i.e., comments on enthusiasm, rule-governance, maturity and similar activities); festive mood (i.e., description of street supports as festival or social movement, interviews with participants about festive mood and other festive aspects); social responses (i.e., comments on national unifications, analyses on causes of huge crowd, interviews with participants about motives, experiences, and changes of their perceptions and attitude); and evaluations and contributions (i.e., outcomes, confirmation or upgrade of national potential from this movement). We counted how long news programs allotted to each. The results are summarized in Table 4.
<Table 4> Further Classification of Media Reports Daily Average Seconds (%)
As Table 4 reveals, the media mostly televised simple descriptions of street support during the incubation period. As the main tournament started, they began to analyze the street supports from several perspectives. Note that a higher proportion of time was allotted to comments on cheering cultures and social responses that were motivational factors for the diffusion during this social contagion period. We could find these changing views from special programs the media released. Three major television networks edited and aired special programs about street support 23 times during this period. They sometimes presented the development processes of the Red Devils, made comparisons with ‘Ultra Nippon’ or European soccer fan styles, or invited discussion panels to discuss this new phenomenon. Likewise, four major national newspapers released 162 special columns on the street supports. Prominent figures in Korea, such as sociologists and scholars of Korean literature or culture, began to treat the street supports as a new social movement.
Invention Period: A Collusive Drama as a National Festival
As the Korean national team moved to the next rounds of the World Cup, the Red Devils participants increased to more than 6 million and people gathered at more than 400 sites across the country. People naturally gathered together not only in the streets, but also at restaurants, cafés, bars, and other gathering points. When the match was held during school class time, most schools (primary, middle, and high schools) skipped lectures, and instead all the students got together to watch the games on TV in the class. Most companies also called the day off and employees watched the games together on TV or joined the street supports. Participants seemed to change their attitudes toward the street support and collectively created a festive mood during this stage. The media began to describe the street support as a new social movement after the second round match. It is shown in Table 4 that the proportion of news about the festive mood or the outcomes was increased as the team moved to the next round.
Guss Hiddink, the manager of the national team, played a crucial role in the festivities. He promoted and sustained the excitement with provocative words during press interviews after finalizing the team’s advance to the second round: “I am still hungry and we can do more than what we have done so far. Please enjoy the additional matches to come.” Whenever he had a chance, he asked his players and supporters to enjoy the game rather than focus on winning, so as to alleviate the pressure that may lower the players’ performance. Interview records reveal several statements suggesting that supporters indeed began to enjoy the games without the “must win” pressure from the second round on. There was a clear difference in value perception between the early majority (i.e., those who joined the street support from the first round of matches) and late majority (i.e., those who joined from the second round). Most of the early majority group joined street support as a duty. Their acts served as a means for accomplishing a national goal and they wanted to demonstrate their support to the players and visitors. In contrast, the late majority did not have a must win pressure and did not feel any kind of duty. Their motivation for the most part was to enjoy the festive mood itself.
“I am here to recreate myself. Frankly I hesitated to be there before, because I worried about troubles or uncertainties from a crowd mood. From a certain point of time street supports looked like a festival. I am here to enjoy the festive mood.”
As the national team continued to win, most Koreans maintained their enthusiastic mood regardless of the outcome of the game. Despite its disappointing loss to Germany in the semi-finals, they remained festive. The Red Devils were still cheering long after the game. Although some looked grave and others were noticeably tearful, the overall mood was still one of celebration. Indeed, the real worry at the team’s final match was that the festival might come to an end.
“I had never experienced this kind of unity and passion in my entire 50 years of life. It looks like a drama. After the final match, I felt an emptiness not because we had lost, but because the festival was no more. It took a while for me to pick up my daily routine after the event.”
We could observe participants' festive mood along other dimensions. They displayed body paintings and brought flags and other souvenirs not only to show their support and patriotism, but also to decorate themselves. It was estimated that more than 20 million flags and “Be The Reds” t-shirts were sold during the World Cup period. A fad occurs whenever large numbers of people enthusiastically embrace some pattern of behavior for a short period. Most participants had never tried body or face paintings in public, but became uninhibited during these events with leg, abdomen, or face painting; they also decorated themselves with flags. Various types of products, such as clothes, shoes, hats, and decorations with the ‘red’ theme, gained rapid acceptance. Some informants reported wearing provocative, semi-nude clothing and/or painting the best parts of their bodies (i.e., chests, buttocks, or legs). Our observations were fraught with examples that were provocative and creative. Moreover, ornamentations and alterations of the human body reflected daring and creative ethos of the festival. Also, members of the group began to enter a state of suggestibility while focusing on the same object and event, and sometimes engaging in heroic behavior they would normally be afraid to try (e.g., marching with a large sized national flag on the streets).
Koreans not only consumed their mutual street support, but also invented a new national identity. Initially, they consumed street supports as an experience (i.e., fun, excitement, escape) or as a task (i.e., duty, national esteem). Later, they collectively made street support a national product. Supporters were active producers of symbols and signs through consumption. We elaborate Korean street supporters as a collusive drama (Myerhoff, 1984). Korean street supports showed the very dynamics of ritual invention and the prevalent style of self-conscious ritual entrepreneurship. Various types of actors created their own national character, developed their own styles of clothing, acquired unique powers, and built the surrounding history through street supports. Red Devils' street supports have reflected aspects of their nation. The World Cup event in Korea has been one of the few, most important international stages on which the Korean social identity could be imagined and performed. In this regard, the Red Devils have been typically presented as ambassadors of the event.
We could find similar cases in the 1990 Italy World Cup. Scotland's ‘Tartan Army’ in Italy partly changed supporting acts from hooligan styles to non-violent, friendly acts and acquired an international reputation as an ambassadorial image (Giulianotti, 1991). The Tartan Army showed that in certain circumstances the apparently opposed categories of carnival and hooligan styles could be submerged within a common Scottish social identity. The Red Devils in Korea can be distinguished from Tartan Army in Italy with respect the peripheral cues, such as behavioral styles and the size of the crowd, and the in- depth cues, such as post-modern nature of consumption, self-conscious development of new cultural principles, and so on. For example, the Red Devils supporters displayed the reversal of production and consumption on the road, which is one of the conditions of postmodern consumption (Fiat & Venkatesh, 1995). There were no natural distinctions between consumption and production; they were one and the same, occurring simultaneously. Each act of production (i.e., street support) became an act of consumption (i.e., festival), and vice versa.
CONCULSIONS
Dissemination of New Cultural Principles: Implications for Korean Society
The street support as a social event during the 2002 World Cup also had rich implications for the Korean society. It was unique in its capacity to convince Koreans of the unbelievable and to link Korean society to grander and tidier totalities. We interpret the consumption of street supports as a discourse among Koreans about a set of new cultural principles that were not governed by a set of past common values. They developed self-conscious consumer ideology, that is, consumer beliefs and doctrines about how a consumption event should be (Wallenforf & Arnould, 1991). The street support was the lens through which Koreans viewed a new world and the blueprint that determined the coordinates of social action and productive activities (McCracken, 1986). Although we are not sure how long these new principles will last, they have since permeated through the entire Korean society.
First, Koreans reaffirmed their national pride and the belief that their society was indeed characterized by mature citizenship and national unity. Korea became the first non-European and non-South American country to reach the semifinals in the 72-year history of the World Cup. This fact alone instilled a sense of confidence among Koreans that “we can achieve anything,” and such confidence continued to manifest itself even after the World Cup. For example, the younger generations took the initiative in organizing social meetings and actively participating in the presidential elections at the end of 2002. It was concluded that their participation played a decisive role in election results (Chosun Daily News, December 24, 2002).
Second, the leadership of Hiddink, the head couch of the national team, played a role in transmitting the new social principles as well. Soccer experts agreed that the outstanding performance of the national team could be attributed to “Hiddink-style” management strategies and philosophy. He chose athletes based on ability by eradicating so-called “connection-ism” and selected new strategies that emphasized “multi- player” and “power soccer as a team.” Most Koreans believed that this fair competition and teamwork between players improved the team performance. After the World Cup, various types of organizations, such as companies and political parties, began to analyze the leadership style and tried to apply his principles to their operations.
Third, participants also discovered the true value of being liberated from the “must-win” pressure, which allowed them to fully enjoy the street support activities. Volunteerism or self-motivated work by the Red Devils was a source of dynamic energy during the street support. Rooted in the interdependent nature of the Asian culture, the Korean society often put group before individuals. Individuals were often asked to sacrifice their self-interests for the benefit of the group. To a certain extent, the World Cup experience was beginning to change this age-old cultural characteristic. They became more aware of the sources of constraints and restrictions in their daily lives. These constraints may be their time schedule, authority figures in their jobs, family relationships, and so on. They realized that liberation from these constraints could improve their performance and heighten their quality of life.
Discussions and Future Research Direction
We have presented an in-depth exploration of street support consumption in Korea. Our key findings center on the development process of the emergent subculture among supporters and transition process of street supports from a community activity to a nationwide festival. With these results we suggest several interesting topics and future research directions. First, in relation to the structures of the Red Devils, ethnographies of subcultures of sports, leisure, youth, and deviance reveal hierarchical social structures based on the relative statuses of individual members (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). The power structure of a community usually takes on the appearance of a pyramid (i.e., a relatively few power people at the top, followed by those with less power in the lower levels) and the social status or order is based on the experience and perceived competence. Red Devils have a structure, but superiority of the core members over others in terms of their attire, skillfulness, and passion could not last long in street supports. Their relationships among subgroups are individualistic and supportive in unison rather than subordinate. On the contrary, the core members displayed sacrifice instead of influence or authority over the others. The Red Devils can be a good example of a customer-centric model of brand community in a sense that meaningfulness of the community is inherent in supporters' experience, rather than in the national team around which that experience revolves (McAlexander el at., 2002). We partly attribute the fast diffusion of street supports to this nature of their relationships among Red Devils. We thus suggest that diffusion rate of the community may be influenced by how easily followers can imitate expert behavior (or learn skill) and how soon they can perceive their autonomous roles in acts. A systematic analysis is needed that compares diffusion rates of various types of communities according to their hierarchical structures and interrelationships among subgroups.
Second, we recognize that the common dream of winning was a major theme and a decisive factor in the consumption of roadside supports. It provided absorption and integration, joy and valuing, and a spontaneous participation motive to most Koreans; it also led participants to experience we-ness and patriotism. Because of the dream of winning, participants perceived supporting acts as worthwhile despite the significant cost. These results may provide meaningful implications about how to get voluntary and enthusiastic supports from the customers. For example, marketing managers need to understand which dreams will capture the customer and create products and services that are designed and engineered to stimulate intense emotions associated with the dreams (Longinotti-Buitoni & Longinotti-Buitoni, 1999). We may understand the construct of brand attachment more fully by considering consumers’ emotions associated with the dreams (Thomson, MacInnis, & Park, 2005). The latent participants, even without membership, were committed to, invested in, and made sacrifices for the national team because they shared a strong wish-fulfillment belief. Future researchers may be interested to explore which factors lead consumers to have dreams associated with brands and how those dreams affect their emotions and behavior.
Third, the core members of the Red Devils used ritualization as a strategic way to organize street supports (i.e., formality, traditionalism, and sacred symbolism). Cultural values, support traditions, and social roles from ritualized consumption practice in street supports provided influential meanings and practices that structure participants’ identity, actions, and relationships. Ritual experience has been considered as being built in an episodic manner, and past studies have elaborated on ritual construct as a vehicle for interpreting consumer behavior. However, the observations in this study illustrate the value of ritualization strategy for the marketers to develop in launching new brands. To successfully incorporate the ritual components into the brands we need to know much more about how ritual systems represent the dynamics of symbolic consumptions. As such, it invites more studies of 1) why consumers choose, buy, and use ritual artifacts; 2) how they respond to the given artifacts and when they learn to decode symbolic meanings; and 3) how they come to ritualize specific aspects of their behavior.
Finally, we introduce consumers’ inferred self-evaluations (ISE) as powerful forces in guiding their behavior. ISE in street support consumption can be regarded as supporters' inferred self-consciousness and evaluations of the audiences' responses to their acts. Even under the cases that other people do not pay attention to the consumers’ acts or their evaluations are neutral, consumers’ consciousness itself may guide their behavior. We outlined that the supporters’ acts were aimed at foreign visitors and game viewers worldwide and that these audiences played a critical role in constraining their temptation to engage in more deviant acts and inducing them to display desirable behaviors such as street cleanings. ISC can be distinguished from subjective norms that Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) suggested in their theory of reasoned action. Subjective norms represents the consumers' perceptions of what other people believe they should do. In contrast, ISC represents the consumers’ inferred evaluations of brand attitude toward their acts. Consider the following scenario: there is a coffee shop near school and the main targets of the store are students. A professor headed for the coffee shop to kill time changes his mind on the way because he became conscious of the owner’s attitude. He thought that the owner of the store did not welcome his patronage because it may hurt the young image of the store. In a normative sense, he did not need to hesitate in visiting the coffee shop, but he did because he was personally conscious of the owner’s attitude. More precise conceptualization of this construct and empirical tests of its effects on consumers’ behaviors will be an interesting research direction in the future.
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