The Football Fan Movement: Structure and Collective Identities

The article is dedicated to the study on the identification characteristics of football fans. The main question of the research is aimed at identifying who a football fan is, and how he defines himself. The empirical base of the study includes 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with football fans of PFC CSKA. According to the results of the work, it was revealed that the portrait of a football fan is a collective image, and the identity of representatives of the fan movement is plastic and fragmentary. Due to the presence of many subgroups within the fan movement, fans can identify themselves differently each time depending on how they overcome certain barriers. Moreover, moving between groups does not imply a change in significance or a change in the fan's attitude to a particular group. Contrary to assumptions, the boundaries between groups are quite flexible and surmountable, and the process of identity formation is constantly renewed, not static.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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