This abstract integrates the central aspects of an investigation that identifies and tries to explain the way in which football, understood as a socio-cultural expression and global media sport, becomes a relevant aspect of the phenomenon of Mediatization (Jarvard, 2016), impacting the young audience of Bogotá, taking into account the way in which soccer's perception and sense of identity are intertwined in the Colombian context.
The study of the phenomenon is based on the digital interactions of the young audience, through Twitter and Instagram, during four official matches of the Colombia Senior Men's Team *.
The research is supported by mixed methodology, with qualitative preeminence. The orientation is an exploratory approach, applied to the young audience of Bogotá (people between 18 and 24 years of age, consumers and producers of messages and digital content) that frequently use Twitter and Instagram, with a priority interest in football.
In the initial stage, the research synthesizes information about the Theory of Mediatization (Hjarvard, 2013; EsseryStrömbäck, 2014; Lundby 2014) and its role in the communication of the 21st century. In the second phase, we analyze the importance of football in the construction of national identity in Colombia and how this concept is articulated with the sports mega events (Cornelissen, 2012).
In the third stage, the processes of digital interaction between the members of the young audience of Bogotá, on Twitter and Instagram, are visualized, described and analyzed during the four official matches of the Colombia National Soccer Team.
The Theory of Mediatization and the impact that this phenomenon generates in society, finds a particular perspective in the Latin American context (Verón, 2015), specifically in Colombia, where the phenomenon of football, as a mass communicative aspect, produces multiplicity of interactions, various reactions that influence in the vision of the young audience, linked to their sense of national identity, their vision of the country and the elements that give meaning to a sports citizenship.
In Bogotá, with a population of more than nine million people, the use of thousands of mobile devices connected to the internet in real time, during the matches of the Colombian Men's Soccer Team, causes the impact and interaction to increase exponentially (Ladrón de Guevara, 2019).
This reality gives elements to study the way in which the young audience communicates through Twitter and Instagram, makes it possible to analyze the meaning of the digital content that it creates and, from a perspective linked to state power and private enterprise, allows to infer how they are built Perceptions of identity and notions of national meaning.
This paper is linked, in this way, with Media, Communication and Sport Section. The main topics are Media, Sport and Cultural Citizenship.
* The four corpus analysis matches are: the first round of qualifiers to Qatar 2022 (Colombia vs. Venezuela, March 25, 2020); and the three first round matches of Copa América 2020 (Colombia vs. Ecuador, June 13; Colombia vs. Venezuela, June 17; and Colombia vs. Peru, June 26).