ABSTRACT
Although athlete activism has gained tremendous popularity in all levels of competition over the years. With the Covid 19 pandemic, we started to witness numerous acts of activism such as protests and rallies that counted with the presence and support of some of sport's biggest names. Moreover, this topic, in specific the fan reaction to athlete activism remains vastly understudied. To better understand the manners in which Portuguese sports fans react to athlete activism on social media there is a need to deepen our understanding on this topic. Much of the academic research and studies performed on the area of athlete activism and fan reaction to said activism has been mostly conducted in the USA. To better comprehend the state of activism by professional athletes today as well as to have a better historic comprehension around athlete activism, a systematic literature review process was used to collect relevant literature. Consequently, this provides a solid theoretical framework that can back up an empirical investigation with a quantitative approach about Portuguese sports fans reaction to professional athlete's activism on social media. This process served the fundamental purpose of identifying relevant and valid literature in a systematic and organized manner while observing that the majority of the studies around this thematic used a qualitative approach. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.