Saturday Night’s Alright for Tweeting: Cultural Citizenship, Collective Discussion, and the New Media Consumption/Production of Hockey Day in Canada

Drawing upon data collected during the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s 2011 Hockey Day in Canada broadcast, this paper examines how users of Twitter variously reproduced or contested this mediated television program. Three emergent themes from these data are discussed: the sociocultural importance of hockey to Canadians; the corporate sponsorship of Hockey Day in Canada; and the role of controversial commentator Don Cherry on the Canadian public broadcaster. These data suggest that new media can be a site for collective discussion on important sociopolitical issues, a conclusion that is discussed with reference to Scherer and Whitson’s (2009) argument that access to hockey broadcasts is a component of Canadian cultural citizenship; and Jenkins’ (2006a; 2006b) research on access to and participation in new media cultures.