Football fan subculture and practice of threats: mental, discoursive and behavioral strategies

The proposed paper explores different aspects of football fan subculture as potential source of threat. The mental, discoursive and behavioral strategies of fans that could be perceived as dangerous for the society are the main focus of our analysis. To serve as material for the analysis we selected a number of Russian football (soccer) fan websites that offer public communication of fans of various teams as well as interviews of individuals in the fan movement. We attempt to describe certain elements of the fan subculture as a specific modern social phenomenon, as well as to look at them through the lens of concepts revealing the archaic legacy of modern violence-related collective practices. We also briefly cover the contemporary research data on typologies of fans and their (self)representation in media. Our research resulted in describing certain mental strategies, such as constructing highly judgmental binary opposition systems of "insider-outsider" / "good-bad", quasireligious sacralization of a certain team and its attributes, blurring the borders between fictional and ecstatically realistic perception of football. We outline discoursive strategies of using slang as a method for subcultural isolation, using obscene language and creating new linguistic constructions. Behavioral strategies include performances, trips, willingness to fight as well as wearing club outfits and insignia.

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